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SERMONS 



PREACHED BY 



WILLIAM H. H. MURRAY. 



SECOND SERIES. 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY, 

(LATE TICKNOR 4 FIELDS, AND FIELD3, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
Io72. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Rand, Avery, <5^ Co., Stereotypers and Printers, Boston, 



COSTTE^TS. 



Topic. —The Organization and Administration of City Churches, 7 

" Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to 
die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God." — Rev. iii. 2. 

Subject. — Charity of Judgment • , 25 

" Judge not, that ye be not judged." — Matt. vii. 1. 

Subject. — God's Gifts to Man, and Man's Responsibility as in- 
ferred therefrom 41 

" Every good gift arid every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down 
from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow 
of turning." — James i. 17. 

Subject. — The Danger and Wickedness of Seeming to be Better 

THAN YOU REALLY ARE . 59 

"Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance; 
for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. 
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." — Matt. vi. 16. 

Topic. — Transition-Periods in Religious Growth and Teachings, 79 

u Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfil." — Matt. v. 17. 

Topic — The Two Immortalities 99 

"For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." — 
Rom. xiv. 7. 

Topic — Prosperity as Promotive of Christian Growth . . 118 
"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places." — Ps. xvi. 6. 

Subject. — Knowledge of Christ 138 

" And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." — Ephes. iii. 19, 

iii 



iv CONTENTS. 

Subject. — Divine Government ......... 158 

" Thy throne is established of old." — Ps. xciii. 2. 

Topic— Humanity the Best Proof of Divinity 176 

" Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things 
which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised 
up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." — Matt. xi. 4, 5. 

Subject.— Adherence to Goodness in Principle and Act , . 196 

" Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to 
that which is good." — Rom. xii. 9. 

Subject.— Ministering to the Good of Others 212 

11 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
and to give his life a ransom for many." — Matt. xx. 28. 

Subject.— Need of an Atonement, and why Needed , . . 231 

" Without shedding of blood is no remission." — Heb. ix. 22. 

Subject. — Need of an Atonement, and why Needed . . . 250 

" Without shedding of blood is no remission." — Heb. ix. 22. 

Subject.— The Duty of Christians to send the Gospel to Heathen 
Lands , . 286 

" The entrance of Thy words giveth light." — Ps. cxix. 130. 

Topic — The Atonement: how Energized, and how Resisted . 285 

" Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of 
redemption." — Ephes. iv. 30. 

Topic — Saving the Lost 302 

The Parable of the Lost Sheep. — Luke xv. 3-7. 

Subject. — Improvement of Spiritual Opportunities . . . . 321 

" And, while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were 
ready went in with him to the marriage; and the door was shut." — 
Matt. xxv. 10. 

Subject. — Kindly Affections the Evidence of True Piety . . 337 
11 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love." — Rom. xii. 10. 

Subject. —Abhorrence of Evil 356 

11 Abhor that which is evil." — Rom. xii. 9. 



SABBATH MOBNLYG, OCT. 8, 1871. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC-THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF CITY CHURCHES. 

"Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain that 
are ready to die j for i have not found thy works perfect before 
God." —Rev. iii. 2. 

THERE are two sources of power in the Christian 
Church ; the one human, the other divine. The 
two united, and acting in conjunction one with an- 
other, represent the sum total of those influences now 
at work among men. God co-operates with men to 
originate and establish wiiat is needed for the better 
energizing of his merciful intentions toward the race. 
Like two streams, one of which has its head far up in 
the mountains, while the other starts from some spring 
in the valley, which come together, and join their cur- 
rent, so the natural and supernatural are united in 
the administration of the Church. On the one hand, 
the Holy Ghost is manifestly present, quickening, 
directing, and convicting not a few; on the other, 
purely human agents and agencies are in opera- 
tion. 

Of one of these two classes of power I wish at 
this time to speak. My theme is the " Organization 

7 



8 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

and Administration of City Churches ; " and I intro- 
duce the subject to-day, not because I feel that I am 
able to discuss it exhaustively, but because I feel 
that the matter should be brought up and discussed 
by some one. It is a subject of the deepest interest to 
all Christian men ; and the sooner the Church takes it 
up and studies it, the better it will be for her own 
honor and those high interests which God has in- 
trusted to her keeping. 

The first thing to be ascertained at the outset is, 
Where does the converting power of the modern 
Church lie ? Is it to be found in the pulpit, or the 
pews ? or jointly in both ? For if it should appear 
that it does not exist to the needed extent where 
people imagine it does, then would they look else- 
where for it. If in the pulpit, then the organization 
and administration of our churches should be entirely 
unlike what they should be if it exists outside of the 
pulpit. When the proper foundation is found, then 
the building can go up, — not before. 

There can be no doubt that formerly the pulpit did 
nearly represent the entire converting energies of the 
Church. It represented the human agency in every 
revival. Every one so regarded it ; and the organiza- 
tion of the Church, the rules and methods, the offi- 
( ial structure, all was shaped in accordance with this 
idea. 

But a change came. The situation and condition 
of the Church were modified. And I will give you 
in brief the history of these changes, that you may 
the better understand the position of to-day. We all 



OF CITY CHUECHES. 9 

know, that, in the beginning of Christianity, every dis- 
ciple became an agent to convert others. Every con- 
vert was, not merely in name, but in fact and practice, 
a preacher of the faith. The letters which Paul from 
time to time addressed to the churches prove this : 
they abound with directions and exhortations to the 
workers. His epistles, urging active effort, and indi- 
vidual devotion to the Master, were read to all the 
churches, and received by the members, personally 
addressed to each one. James took the same view. 
The great aim of apostolic effort seemed to be to 
make workers, — enlist agents in the service of Christ. 
The early preachers of the faith never labored to 
build up a hierarchy, a caste, a priesthood, in which 
should be lodged all power, by which should be rep- 
resented all converting energies : they strove to 
make every member of the church active ; constant, 
in season and out of season, to win souls. To this 
both the teachings and example of the apostle alike 
tended. Personal activity was the basis upon which 
the early Church was founded. This was the Gib- 
raltar of that faith which felt itself to be invincible, 
and destined to rule the world. Each church had a 
bishop, or overseer : and the very name implied a 
body of laborers under him, — an active, earnest, 
helpful lay-element ; men and women who had work 
to do, and over whom the bishop or preacher was in- 
stalled, as a colonel over a regiment, or a captain 
over a crew. This was the idea. For centuries it 
was universally held and complied with. The pas- 
tors directed, and the churches worked. Then came 
1* 



10 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

pride and priestly assumption, and ambition to rule. 
These invaded the churches ; took possession of the 
minds of the clergy ; and in order that a priesthood 
might be built up in whom should be lodged all 
power, and who should represent all activity, the lay- 
element was suppressed. At last, the Church surren- 
dered : song and prayer and exhortation and labor 
ceased in her membership ; and the priestly caste held 
undisputed possession of the organization, and wielded 
it for their own purposes. 

Then came the dark ages, — a dead level of spirit- 
ual lapse and stagnation, without even a ripple of 
activity to denote the existence of life or impulse. 
From the Stygian wave of that all-ingulfing sea, in 
which all art, all knowledge, all virtue, sank, and was 
lost to man, Rome emerged stronger, more cruel, 
more tyrannous, than ever. Beneath and around the 
feet of her pontiff, every spiritual function of the 
Church, every activity, lay chained, slaves to her will. 

No hymn, no prayer, no exhortation, was heard, 
save such as were chanted by the order of her priests. 
Then Luther, raised and inspired of God, arose. The 
Reformation came ; and partial liberty was the result. 
I say, partial liberty, — freedom from Rome, but not 
freedom to work ; freedom for the ministry, but not 
freedom for the laymen. They were still held in a 
thraldom beside which the tyranny of man is as noth- 
ing, — the thraldom of custom, the slavery of prece- 
dent. As it is with woman now, the lay-element 
of the Christian Church had been educated into 
silence. Centuries of custom intimidated them ; the 



OF CITY CHUECHES. 11 

gag of a false timidity choked them. A priest 
had rebelled against Rome, and given liberty to the 
pulpits ; but no layman was found to rebel against 
the pulpit, and give liberty to the pews. The Refor- 
mation was thus radically incomplete. Only one part 
of the Church was emancipated, and restored to the 
primitive liberty. The Reformation in Germany left 
the Church a great way below the position in which 
Paul left it. 

At last came Wesley, — a greater than Luther, as I 
have often thought. It was not, it is true, the pope he 
opposed : but he did oppose and make war upon the 
same spirit of assumption of power in the ministry ; the 
same exclusiveness that made the Papacy a curse to 
man, and a hinclerance to the Church. When Meth- 
odism arose, the Pauline churches were reproduced 
in history. Every man's mouth was opened ; the 
membership found their voice ; and praise and prayer 
and exhortation sounded once more in the assembly 
of the saints. The Pauline liberty was practised ; 
and the Phoebes and Dorcases were permitted to have 
an ecclesiastical existence and mention. 

]\I) r friends, I feel like pausing here to make j'our ac- 
knowledgments and mine to John Wesley, and those 
co-laborers of his, whose pietj^ and sanctified resolution 
gave to the membership of the churches what the Ref- 
ormation by Luther gave to the ministry, — liberty to 
speak and work as the Spirit of God moved them. This 
is the age of lay-effort, the day of spiritual liberty : 
and, as we stand bathed in the light of it, let us recall 
the early dawn ; let us remember the obloquy those 



12 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

men endured by whose prayers and labors the liberty 
and light came. Let no one call them Methodists. 
Methodism cannot claim them. The Lutheran Church 
might as well endeavor to monopolize Luther. They 
were God's gifts to the race. They belong to the 
Church universal ; they belong to mankind. Place 
their busts in what niche you please ; carve on the 
tablet what record you may : I bring my leaf of lau- 
rel, my sprig of bay ; and the suffrage of the world 
says, " These men belong not to any denomination ; 
they belong to the whole Church of God : his laurel 
and his bay, Congregationalist though he be, must 
be woven in their wreath." 

You can trace the great success of Methodism to 
the fact that it has duplicated the Pauline energy in 
the organization of their churches. It has had but 
one motto, — the utilization of all spiritual forces. 
If a man could pray or sing or exhort, he was allowed 
to do it. If a saint chanced to be of the female gen- 
der, it did not consign her to the limbo of nonenti- 
ties, and gag her mouth with a perverted and mis- 
applied text of Scripture : it gave her full permis- 
sion to serve the Master as he by nature and 
grace had qualified her. It has found a place for 
every man, and a man for every place. That is the 
whole philosophy of the success of Methodism. It 
has been courageous. It has not been afraid of 
change, of innovation. It has not been afraid of 
" new methods." It has not been ashamed of its 
poverty, nor of the ignorance of its itinerant preach- 
ers, which has been so much emphasized by ministerial 



OF CITY CHURCHES. 13 

purists. A great many Congregational churches are 
in danger of dying because of their learned pulpits. 
They are carrying too much theology, and too little 
active piety, to live. They are in the condition of 
the patient who was told by his physician, that, in order 
to live, he must have his head cut off. The reason 
why I so often refer with gratitude to the Methodist 
Church is, because it has done so much to bring out 
and set to work the lay-element. It has reproduced 
the apostolic economy of moral forces. It has re- 
affirmed the right of woman to a religious character, 
and to all those exercises of mind and soul which 
make such a character possible ; and made the pre- 
diction safe, that she who gave unto Christ whatever 
of human nature he had, bringing him forth as a son 
without a father, will be the foremost to advance his 
blessed cause, and the first to welcome him at his sec- 
ond coming in power. This is why I honor it. May 
that Lord who raised it up, and entered it as a wedge 
under the iron-like band of prejudice and ecclesiastical 
tyranny, preserve it from that pride and timidity which 
would blunt its edge and destroy its coherence, and 
drive it well home, to the cleaving of whatever puts a 
pressure upon the functions of the Church, and the 
liberty of the soul in its longings for God and its 
labors for man ! 

I do not wish to be understood as saying that the 
lay-element, as a converting force, is as yet fully de- 
veloped even in the Methodist Church ; and, if not 
in it, far less is it in the churches of our denomina- 
tion. We have approached so far toward liberty as 



14 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

to doubt the divinity of our slavery. That, at least, 
is sure. The time was, in this country, when none 
but the minister could conduct prayer-meetings, and 
none save the deacons were good enough to pray 
and exhort in them ; nor even they, unless specially 
sanctified by the invitation of the pastor. The time 
was, when the sex would have been scandalized if a 
Christian mother should have dared to lead in prayer 
at the family-altar, or invoke the divine blessing at 
the table. We have got some ways beyond that. If 
any one desires to know where the movement, begun 
in Wesley, and which has lifted and propelled the 
Church as the incoming wave lifts and heaves a ship 
forward, will stop, he can easily ascertain. Its logical 
conclusion, and to which the next generation will 
come, is this, — that every converted person, white 
or black, male or female, has the inalienable right to 
serve God and man in whatever way the Author of 
being, and the Cod of all grace, has made possible. 
Voice and hand and heart shall speak and labor and 
beat as the Spirit shall quicken them, unhindered by 
any. That is what we are coming to ; that is the 
shore toward which the current sets. On it, when 
reached, the Church will stand in that wide liberty to 
love and work which she enjoyed in her early prime. 
Swift be the coming of that blessed day ! 

Now, the introduction of this element of force, the 
lay-element, into the Church, has brought, and is 
bringing, great changes to it. Its entire administra- 
tion is affected by it. It not only directs the general 
activities of the Church, not only modifies the opin- 



OF CITY CHURCHES. 15 

ions of the membership ; but it has vastly modified 
both the manner and the matter of the instruction 
given it. Take this matter of preaching as an illus- 
tration. Imagine an audience without a single sab- 
bath-school teacher in it ; without a single young 
man who ever assisted at a prayer-meeting, or ever 
expected to assist ; without a female prayer-meeting, 
or a benevolent sewing-society ; where a missionary 
box or society was an unheard-of thing ; where a 
newspaper was a wonder, and a luxury enjoyed only 
by a dozen families, — picture, I say, such a congrega- 
gation, and conceive how different it would be forme 
to minister to it from what it is to minister to you. 
There I should be a teacher before his pupils : here 
I am a teacher among teachers. Such a congregation 
I should teach for their own good : you I teach for the 
good of others. They would be only recipients : you 
are recipients only that }~ou may become better 
agents. You see the difference. You see why preach- 
ing has changed in our churches. A city church is 
a spiritual normal school, — a place where religious 
teachers are taught, where men and women are pre- 
pared and furnished with the matter and method 
of instruction to others. 

Observe, also, that this state of things is becoming 
more and more prevalent year by year. As the lay- 
element is more and more developed ; as mission- 
schools and Bethels and charity-boards and Bible- 
readers multiply in our cities ; as the spirit of individ- 
ual effort becomes universal, and the organization of 
the spiritual forces of the Church, as represented by 



16 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

the membership, more and more complete, — the more 
will the preacher's functions be affected, until, at last, 
under every pastor will be an organization of work- 
ers, banded together for work, each member feeling 
a personal responsibility for the world's conversion, 
manifold activities finding manifold channels of ex- 
pression ; and he will be, as his predecessors in 
apostolic times, truly and in fact a bishop, or over- 
seer. 

What burdens the pulpit to-day is not the amount 
of pages that the preacher has to write, but the charac- 
ter of the composition. Formerly the preaching was 
largely expository and doctrinal, and the preacher 
walked from j r ear to year around the same circle of 
theological discussion ; but now, owing to the de- 
velopment of the lay-element in the Church, a thou- 
sand and one topics of vital interest to, and vitally 
affecting, the Church, must needs be examined and 
discussed. How to restrain, and yet not to offend ; 
how to stimulate and cheer on without encouraging 
rashness ; how to adjust the new to the old, so as 
to prevent destruction to the one, and friction to the 
other ; how to keep at the head of the radicals with- 
out forfeiting the confidence of the conservatives, — 
these and many other problems are tasking the pul- 
pits of the land to their utmost capacity. I do not 
hesitate to say, that in order to conduct the admin- 
istration of any prominent city church successfully, 
so as to meet either public expectation or the demands 
of the cause, one needs to possess rare powers of tact, 
judgment, and general ability. He must, in addition 



OF CITY CHURCHES. 17 

to the qualities that make a preacher, possess those 
higher qualities that denote a statesman, — the abili- 
ty to both anticipate and provide for future contingen- 
cies. 

The trouble is, that, at the present time, the Church 
has not really accepted the position which it is plain 
she must sooner or later take. We are in a transition 
state, not from one form of doctrinal belief to anoth- 
er, but from one form of administration to another. 
The work to be done is beyond the capacity of the 
Church, under her present methods of service. To 
illustrate : The ministry is in the position of a manu- 
facturer, who began with one shop, and a business 
to which he could be the sole and adequate overseer ; 
but now his business has so expanded, branch after 
branch has been added, shop after shop builded, that 
he cannot adequately oversee it alone, and yet can find 
no one to whom to intrust the management of the sev- 
eral departments. He does the best he can, — works 
day and night, feelingall the while that no such returns 
are coming in as the business warrants. The establish- 
ment, in point of fact, has no thorough supervision: it 
is running itself, the main reliance being on the indus- 
try and. knowledge of the workmen. Take this church 
and congregation, for instance : there is only one offi- 
cer that really has charge of any thing : I refer to the 
superintendent of the sabbath school. That is in 
good hands, and gives the pastor no uneasiness. But, 
outside of this, the church is not connected officially 
with any branch of spiritual industry. We have no 
board for local charities, none for visitation of the 



18 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

sick and the transient, none for mission-enterprises, 
none for direction and leadership of the young, none 
for literary and social entertainment : all these 
branches of effort, so far as developed, are really 
running themselves. There is to them no responsible 
head with whom the pastor can consult, from whom 
he can receive reports necessary to his own enlighten- 
ment and direction. Officially we are in the same 
position as when no lay-element, no lay-activity, exist- 
ed in the church. Officially we ignore the fact, that 
the last seventy years have brought any change either 
to our duty or our opportunities. 

For one, I am convinced, after a careful examina- 
tion of the entire question, that every city church of 
any considerable size and prominence should enlarge 
its present board of officers to the number of twelve, 
and put each at the head of some one particular branch 
of spiritual activity. Each should have, and be held 
responsible for, his department, as the superintendent 
of the sabbath school is now for it. Each should be 
elected because of his peculiar fitness for the position 
the church elects him to fill ; and the twelve should 
constitute the official board of the church, submitting 
monthly or quarterly their reports to the pastor and 
the church. The wisdom of such an organization 
would, I am persuaded, be speedily manifest in the 
increased results for Christ, and the reputation and 
usefulness of the church. I submit this su^estion to 
your prayerful consideration. 

It appears to me also, that, in our larger and more 
intelligent churches, some other agency than the pul- 



OF CITY CHUKCHES. 19 

pit must be eniploj'ed in order to meet the necessity 
of more accurate and complete knowledge of the 
Bible, and of the best methods of evangelistic labor. 
I do not hesitate to say that the pulpit of this city, as 
it seems to me, is doing all that it possibly can to 
meet the demand now existing ; and yet the demand 
is not met. There is a felt need in this church for a 
course of lectures upon the doctrines, a course upon 
the relation of the Bible to science, a course upon the 
best methods of reaching and converting the masses, 
and a full discussion upon " especial means of grace," 
or how to conduct an anxious soul to Christ. These 
by no means exhaust the list: they serve rather to 
hint at the vast field of investigation and instruction 
which the pulpit cannot at present, under the now- 
existing order of Sunday services, occupy. The 
Church long since, and rightly, adopted the motto of 
"An educated and trained ministry; " but the very 
same reasons which make a trained ministry a neces- 
sity, now compel us to educate and train the lay-ele- 
ment. The education needed is of such a character, 
that the ordinary pulpit ministrations cannot give it. 
You might as well say that a young man can be fitted 
for the ministry by sermons from the pulpit, as that 
sabbath-school teachers, and other lay-workers of a 
church, can be prepared, without other instruction, for 
their labors. Either the services of the sabbath must 
be modified so as to permit the pastors to preach less, 
and teach more ; or else an assistant must be employed, 
to whom the department of rudimental instruction in 
doctrinal knowledge and the ways and means of 



20 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTEATION 

evangelization shall be given. One thing we must 
not ignore : God has raised up a vast resource of con- 
verting power in the Church. The membership is 
full of untrained, undeveloped, unorganized force. 
The ministry no longer represents the agents for 
Christ: a vast amount of unused material lies around 
on all sides. The old methods of church govern- 
ment and administration do not utilize these ; and God 
will hold us responsible, if, by our lethargy or pre- 
judice, these talents lie longer buried. Already the 
charge is made, that the Church does not give em- 
ployment to its members ; that it is unwieldy and 
water-logged ; that it has fallen into the hands of men 
who are, neither in sympathy nor knowledge, up with 
the age ; and that other organizations must be relied 
on to do the Master's work. For one, I mean to wash 
my hands of all responsibility in the matter : I mean 
to do all I may to put the Church in such a position, 
that any other organization shall be seen to be super- 
fluous ; in such a position, that every gift of nature 
and grace in the membership shall be utilized, and so 
that there shall be an appointed and honored place in 
which every member may serve the Lord. 

Of one thing I am persuaded, — that no efficient 
organization will ever be made in our churches until 
the departmental rule is adopted. Great enterprises 
cannot be carried on for God, any more than for man, 
with every thing at loose ends. In religion, as repre- 
sented by the experience and duty of the churches, 
we find every thing, — from the sublime in speculation 
and faith to the homeliest matter-of-fact detail-work. 



OF CITY CHURCHES. 21 

Like the angels in story, we feed the hungry with our 
eyes fastened on the stars. System is not less valu- 
able in spiritual than in financial matters. As things 
are now, there is no assortment or direction, or econ- 
omy of force, by the churches. The pastor and sab- 
bath-school superintendent are the only members who 
really know what is expected of them. Whoever 
works at all, works at will, — when, where, and how 
he pleases. There is no discrimination touching spirit- 
ual gifts : you find a man teaching a sabbath-school 
class of seven who should be preaching to seven hun- 
dred, and another preaching to seven hundred who 
should be in a sabbath-school class. The Church ex- 
erts no wise, controlling direction over her member- 
ship in matters which should be objects of constant 
and prayerful attention. Even her deacons are not 
appointed to any work. The deaconate is nothing 
in our time but an office without a duty : it is looked 
upon as an honor, and men are elected to it as to a rank, 
not a service ; and hence it is given to them as a re- 
ward, or a sort of acknowledgment by the Church that 
they are good, inoffensive men, w^hose record is unim- 
peachable, and whose faces at the communion will 
suggest nothing unpleasant to the participants. The 
fact is, the Church is as ill-conditioned for her work 
as an ancient runner would have been who entered 
the race, where the whole world was to run for the 
prize, with his vestment ungirded, and sandals un- 
laced. Her very efforts to run only impede her the 
more. She is caught and tangled and tripped by her 
exertions. Her very zeal and eagerness hinder her. 



22 ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

But divide the field of duty as felt by the Church 
into sections, introduce the system of departments 
into her organization, elect a capable man to the 
head and chief direction of each department, canvass 
the membership for the proper class of talents to work 
in each, and order at once springs out of confusion, 
zeal out of lethargy, and the Church becomes efficient, 
and an honor to the piety of the land. 

There is one other point I would suggest as worthy 
your attention : I refer to the relation of the churches 
to such as profess to love the Lord Jesus. 

There is a feeling extant, that no one is to be ad- 
mitted to the Church unless he is morally certain 
that he will " sustain himself," or " run well " as the 
phrase is. If a weak, wavering, ill-instructed convert 
applies for admission, the point is often raised, that 
he will not " hold out ; " and he is voted up or voted 
down as the chances for or against this supposition 
balance the scale. My friends, I do not like this way 
of treating such cases. That the " weak in the 
faith" were to be received, it is evident Paul never 
doubted ; for he gave directions how they were to be 
received. I love to think of the Church as a refuge 
for the pursued ; a shelter to which they can run 
when chased by passion and appetite ; yea, a shelter 
of guardian hands and loving hearts. The Church 
is a fold, where the weak and sick lambs find warmth 
and protection ; where those who have wandered on 
the mountains of their sins, and bear the marks of 
the wolf on their throats, come panting, and stained 
with blood, and have their wounds dressed and healed. 



OF CITY CHURCHES. 23 

So far as I represent this Church, it is and must be a 
life-boat to the drowning, a shield for the timid and 
the weak, a well of water for the thirsty, bread for 
the hungry, charity for the fallen, and helpful love for 
those ready to perish. I have no idea I shall ever 
be disgraced because I help the undeserving, — am 
occasionally deceived, — am kind to some who turn 
and smite me, — am ready to incur whatever risk 
there lies in doing one's duty. What cannot hurt 
his followers, God will see shall not hurt his Church. 
Why, the voice of one who saw Christ only in the 
dimness of vision ; who realized him not as we, — 
through history and the quickening of the Spirit, — 
but through the perspective of faith alone, — the 
voice of Isaiah rebukes the faltering of modern cau- 
tion : " Ho r every one that thirsteth, come ye to 
the waters." The conditions of membership to this 
Church are the scriptural conditions, — " repentance 
and faith." The sacrament-table is not ours ; it is the 
Lord's : he spreads it, and not we ; he invites you to 
it, and not we ; he imposes the terms, and not we. 
You who have repented of your sins, you who trust 
in the Lord Jesus as your Redeemer, — you are his 
children, his followers, his invited guests. Weak 
or strong, stable or fickle, warm or cold, a child of 
many years or only of a day, — the table and the 
feast are for you ; and no human authority can right- 
fully keep you from it. 

Somewhere ahead of us is a day of moral victory 
and universal peace. The past reverberates with 
cannon ; but the future is resonant with the chime of 



24 ORGANIZATION OF CITY CHURCHES. 

many bells, and the)' play in perfect tune ceaselessly. 
By and by we shall come and stand beneath the dome 
in which they hang ; and as we hear them played on 
by invisible hands, their notes beating through the 
air like pulses, and as our bosoms heave to their 
swelling and throbbing, and all our faculties are 
lifted to ecstasy, then I hope, I expect, to see written 
around the majestic dome in which the bells of peace 
are swinging, in lines of living light, these words : 
" The Church of the Living God." 



SABBATH MORNING, OCT. 15, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT. -CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 
44 Judge not, that ye be not judged." — Matt. vii. 1. 

IN one sense, the result of Christianity is to canse 
men to pronounce judgments. Whatever edu- 
cates a person into a higher knowledge of and sensi- 
tiveness to right and wrong, whatever opens his eyes 
to the evil in the world and the hatefulness of it, 
whatever makes the unlovely and coarse and vicious 
in character to be recognized as such, must quicken 
the judicial element in men, and cause them to feel 
and speak the proper condemnation. All this, and 
much more in the same direction, Christianity does. 
When the Spirit, whose office-work is to enlighten 
the mind and quicken the conscience, enters the 
soul, and works therein mightily, sin and sinfulness 
appear in their real character. Vice, washed of its 
rouge, and stripped of its veil, stands forth in all 
its deformity, the coarseness of its expression, the 
ugly viciousness of its features, clearly seen. And 
so far as men become holy are they made critical. 
Repugnance at what is unseemly is felt, indignation 

2 25 



26 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

experienced ; and their natures rise rip in the presence 
of evil with the port and gesture of an insulted and 
enraged king confronting his foes. 

This is not the " judging " that the Saviour, in the 
words of the text, warns his followers against. Moral 
discrimination is inseparably connected with moral 
purity, and its exercise legitimate ; and Christ never 
desired, much less commanded, that it be otherwise. 

I will call your attention to two considerations that 
will throw light on this passage. I will try to put 
you at Christ's standpoint, that you may see things 
just as he saw them, and understand the motive 
that prompted him to say, " Judge not, lest ye be 
judged." 

In the first place, then, Christ knew man. He was 
familiar with human nature. He knew the prevail- 
ing tendencies of the human heart, and all the strong 
tides of feeling and impulse that set in and out of it. 
He knew all the prejudice and passion and bitterness 
and bigotry, the hotness of temper, and the lurking 
censoriousness, in man. He knew, that, from the time 
Cain smote Abel, violence and cruelty had not lacked 
exponents. Smiting and smiters were everywhere. 
The opposite of love, of tenderness, of charity, of for- 
bearance, of patience, was all around him. Human 
nature was cruel, unjust, devilish. He saw all this, 
I say ; and seeing it, understanding how wicked and 
unlike himself it was, he rebuked it. It is the natural 
censoriousness of human nature, then, the harsh, un- 
charitable element in man, that this command forbids 
and condemns. 



CHAKITY OF JUDGMENT. 27 

Again : Christ, at the time he gave this charge to 
his disciples, was surrounded by foes. He was him- 
self experiencing the injustice he forbade. The Phari- 
sees, the scribes, the Sadducees, and all who were proud 
and unamiable, were swarming around him like hornets, 
and stinging him with their poisoned insults and sus- 
picions and cunning interrogations. Without reason, 
without grounds, without evidence, nay, against all 
these, unjustly, and without charity, they were con- 
demning him. It was in the very teeth of .such a 
whirlwind of misrepresentation and abuse that he 
lifted up this injunction like a strong column of 
granite. The circumstances with which he was sur- 
rounded emphasized the injunction. Out of his own 
direful experience came forth this exhortation to 
charity. It was as if he had said, " Behold, all you 
who are my disciples, how men abuse me ! Observe 
their censoriousness, their harshness, their injustice. 
With no knowledge of my motives, my mission, or my 
nature, see how they sit in judgment upon me ! They 
make of their pride and vanity, their egotism and sus- 
piciousness, a supreme court, and condemn me. Do 
not any of you, nry followers, ever dare to do toward 
each other or any human being what these do toward 
me, or 3-ou shall be sharers in their sin. Judge not, 
lest ye be judged." 

My friends, there are not a few to-day, in and out 
of Christ's Church, who are very like those whose 
judgment of people was harsh and cruel when the 
Lord uttered the words of the text. Human nature 
is as unamiable now as when he lived on the earth. 



28 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

Every third man you meet has a stone in his hand 
to throw at some one. Many of these are professed 
Christians. They are perhaps honest ; that is, not 
consciously malicious. I should not for one dare to 
question their piety ; but they are bigoted, intolerant, 
and wofully lacking in tenderness, — that divinest 
characteristic of Jesus. They exemplify the severe 
virtues of Christianity, to the almost total exclusion 
of the milder graces. Had they lived in the age of 
Jonah, they would have been excellent heralds to 
have sent down to Nineveh. They would not have 
flinched from hurling the needed malediction against 
its grossness and wickedness. They would have set 
the edge of their censure against the swarming and 
cursing mob as a scythe is set against a field of bul- 
rushes. But woe to the thief on the cross, to the 
recreant Peter, to the poor woman whom the Phari- 
sees were so eager to stone, if brought into their 
presence for judgment ! They are men and women 
who seem absolutely incapable of exercising mercy. 
Their bosoms are strangers to such divine sentiment. 
They cannot overlook a failing, forgive a fault, or 
understand that virtue may exist with weakness. A 
branch is an emblem of peace ; but, strip it of its 
twigs and leaves, and you have a rod, — the emblem 
of chastisement. So take from Christianity its mild 
graces, its forgiving tempers, and its charitable ten- 
dencies, and you entirely change its character, making 
it seem what it is not. Now, purity is not judicial ; 
it is not warlike : its symbol — a dove — is the most 
harmless bird that flies. A person may be intensely 



CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 29 

earnest in his Christian life and convictions, and yet 
not be intolerant. Intolerance is no sign of piety, 
though it may be of earnestness. And, as I con- 
ceive, those Christians who make themselves shaip- 
worded censors of other people's foibles, who seize 
every opportunity to inveigh against the habits and 
customs of brethren which happen to run counter to 
their views, who have no mercy and no hope for the 
fallen and the falling, do not act as Christ would have 
them do. 

And now, in further enforcement of the subject, I 
urge three considerations. First, that our ignorance 
of the nature and circumstances of those who err 
compels us to charity of judgment. 

If a man knew the strength . ;of the temptation, and 
the condition, physical and mental, of the tempted, he 
might estimate correctly the real guilt of the criminal. 
To every error and misdeed there is a cause. This 
cause may lie in the depravity of the heart, or in the 
character of one's surroundings, or in both. Some 
ships are wrecked through inherent weakness of tim- 
ber, some by bad pilotage, and some by the irresisti- 
ble power of tempest. There are sins of premedi- 
tation, — gross, wilful, deliberate. Direct and heavy 
be the stroke of our condemnation on these ! But 
there are also lapses from virtue, indiscretions, errors, 
and falls, not wilful, not deliberate. The blood in us 
is feverish ; and gusts of temper, and hot impulses, 
sweep and surge unbidden through us. We are the 
embodiment of contradictions. We were born, it ma}' 
be, from the commingling of contrary or hostile ele- 



30 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

ments. The union of diverse bloods begot commo- 
tion. The mother in us can barely tolerate the father. 
Hence internal strife, fierce grappling, and warfare ; 
hence, too, contradictions in conduct, and widely dif- 
ferent phases of life, in the same man. I merely men- 
tion these things : I make no attempt to analyze or 
to harmonize them. As existing facts, I remark upon 
them. That they lead the thinker into a land shad- 
owy and indistinct proves nothing to their disfavor. 
As you draw near to first causes, everywhere you 
enter into mystery. The mists and vapors which 
swathed the new-born world served to curtain the 
creative energies and instruments from inquisitive 
eyes. Upon my mind, as it sits in judgment upon 
men, these thoughts have great influence. The 
knowledge of my ignorance makes me hesitate : it 
mitigates my condemnation. Men are both unfortu- 
nate and guilty. Some think it orthodox to publish 
the guilt, and disbelieve the misfortune. Well, that is 
one way. There is some profit in it. I often think 
half our virtue comes from our condemning vice. 
The stronger the pendulum swings, the farther it re- 
acts. Nevertheless, friends, all the misfortunes of 
life cannot well be physical. Cannot the mind be 
diseased as truly as the body ? If the intellect errs 
at times, acting mathematically, why may it not err 
when it acts spiritually ? Few men could make an 
astronomical calculation in the midst of battle. 
Should it be a matter of wonder, then, if, wrapped in a 
wilder conflict, fighting with powers and principali- 
ties, a man should lose for a moment the sight of stars 



CHAEITY OF JUDGMENT. 31 

suspended like lamps above the battlements he hopes 
to win? I have known men go down as fools are 
swept away who swim at the mouth of rapids ; and 
others as they knelt, paddle in hand, nervous and alert, 
were hurled into the foam and mist by the uplift- 
ing of currents they strove to control : and he who, 
from the quiet waters below, sees broken oar and 
shivered boat come dashing down, may not declare 
who acted bravely, or w T ho shrank. The guilt, there- 
fore, we leave with God ; the uplifted stone we cast 
away ; and unto Him to whom alone the cause of 
crime is known, ashamed at our eagerness to con- 
demn, we leave the judgment, and, if it must so be, 
the curse. 

Again : I urge this as a further consideration, — 
underlying every honest man's consciousness is the 
conviction of our kinship of evil. Unto all guilt and 
weakness we are connected by a dire taint and scourge. 
Like slaves of old, we are all born under the yoke. 
The faces of all, gay or haggard, look out from under 
burdens. Of evil elements, evilly mingled, were we 
born ; and by evil education have Ave grown. The 
fever rages in us all: the treatment alone has made us 
differ. The universal disease — the epidemic which 
infests all climates, enters all houses, visits every cra- 
dle — is sin. No inoculation, not even of grace, can 
prevent all sharing this awful consanguinity ; for, as of 
old time, it antedates birth. In sin are we conceived. 
Born of flesh, with travail and strong crying, flesh we 
are. The impurity is at the bottom of the fountain ; 
and at every agitation the water rises turbid and offen- 



32 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

sive. This thought is not pleasant ; yet is it literally 
true. We are all in the transgression ; we are all under 
the law. In form and manifestation of sin we are 
individual ; in the essence and motive-cause we are 
folded in the arms of an ugly unity. Well, there is 
profit for us in this thought, if we will but receive it. 
Had those, for instance, who dragged the adulteress 
to Christ, thought of this, they would have been less 
eager. The effect of the reflection, when he brought 
it to bear upon their minds, was overpowering. The 
words of Christ revealed to them their true position. 
The kneeling, terror-stricken wanton at their feet 
was their sister : they, in guilt, were brethren to 
her. Their clamor ceased ; their words of fiery 
censure died on their lips ; the stones with which 
they were to slay her fell from their hands : and 
without a syllable of excuse or vindication, beginning 
with the eldest, they severally departed; and the 
fallen woman (guilty and unfortunate both) was left 
alone with Christ. Good friends, I doubt if any of 
you will say I am over-mild with wrong ; yet, in view 
of our Saviour's conduct, may we not ask, What have 
we to do with stoning ? What down-fallen woman, 
or viler man, may we spurn ? Are we without sin 
ourselves? Has not the absence of temptation, or 
early training, or (sweeter thought) God's restraining 
grace, rather than our own virtue, held us from ruin ? 
It does not become those who walk the edge of chasms 
to revile the white bones beneath. It is more than 
likely, that in the lives of most of us have been pe- 
riods of extreme peril, — hours when all that is pure, 



CHAEITY OF JUDGMENT. 33 

all that is honest, all that is godly, in us, was put to 
the test ; when every wicked agency, every subtle 
enticement, times and seasons, all conspired, and in 
unsought, unanticipated conjunction, bore down upon 
us ; when even the noblest capacities in us were 
temporarily in unhappy alliance with evil, and the 
very traits of temper and of blood which lift us up 
threatened to dash us down. Happy beyond expres- 
sion, if, when so tried, we stood the test, washing our 
garments, and making them whiter in the very waters 
which well-nigh swept us away! As one looks back 
over his life, and recalls such seasons, seeing now, bet- 
ter than at the time, how frightfully near he was to 
ruin, all censure of the less fortunate leaves him. 
He sees how, but for the dire struggles of years which 
had strengthened his will, or some nice sense of pu- 
rity his mother gave him, or, more likely yet, some 
strong-handed mercy reached to him from out of the 
heavens to hold him back, he would have fallen. And 
even now he shudders to think what might have 
been. My friends, I scarcely think any here will call 
this mere sentiment ; and some of you will see in it 
simple history, — the plain record of passages and 
experiences through which you have passed, or, it may 
be, even now are passing. And I would produce in 
your minds what Christ strove to produce in the 
minds of the would-be avengers, — a realization of your 
true position, and charity of judgment, — when he ex- 
claimed, " He that is without sin among you, let him 
first cast a stone." 

I do not plead for crime. I have no sympathy with 



34 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

that maudlin sentimentalism which pardons traitors 

here, and denies the existence of hell herea: 

11-nerved and stout be the arm that smiteth wrong, 
and sharp and swift the censure following knowledge 
of guilt ! But that eagerness to condemn, so notice- 
able in some : that evil construction put on acts whose 
motive is unknown : that merciless remembrance, 
which treasureth up the minutest past delinquency, 
forgetful of after-worth and probable repentance ; 
that whispering suspiciousness, quick and pronged as 
a serpent's tongue, its prototype : that bigotry, and 
assumption of superior sanctity : that hard, unfeminine 
punctiliousness which spurns the fallen, and denies 
the possibility of cleansing to the stained : that clutch- 
ing of stones to pelt one form of sin by hands not 
stainless of other forms, — this is what I deplore: 
this is what I arraign as un-Christlike. Amid such I 
cast the biting permission of this text, at the hearing 
of which the self-righteous Jew stood abashed and 
condemned. 

There be those, I verily believe, living to-day, i; more 
sinned against than sinning,'* who might have been 
saved, had they been treated with the tender rebuke 
of Christ, and not the stones of the Pharisee. There 
be those, who. by the conjunction of untoward circum- 
stances, have, in morals as well as business, met their 
ruin. Like a tree uprooted by converging whirl- 
winds, they were the unconscious centre of powers 
and pressure irresistible by any method of resistance 
known to them. Society forgets this, and judges with 
the sternness of a God, — to whom alone the cause of 



CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 35 

sin is known, — and not with the lenity of a Christian. 
I plead for these. I set their faces in long rows here 
before rne. I group them around this pulpit. I am 
not ashamed to speak, they being my auditors ; and 
I say to you, " Behold their tears, and hear their 
cries ! " Do you say, " They are guilty " ? I respond, 
" Heaven has pity for such." You say, " They are 
unclean.'' I answer, " So was the leper." You say, 
u They rob and steal, the miserable thieves ! " I make 
no verbal response. I visit upon you only the rebuke 
of a gesture. I lift my hand ; and, following the line 
of its direction, you exclaim, " The thief on the cross ! " 
I plead for these, I say. I urge you to feel toward 
them as Christ feels, and do for them what Christ 
would do were he in your place. To touch the stolid 
heart ; to stir the sense of shame, not in order to assist 
the punishment, but the reformation ; to better the 
wrong-doer, and not execute the penalty, — should be 
the^ object and the effect of Christian intercourse with 
the erring. That harshness, that severity, which is 
not so directed and inspired, while it may be in the 
eye of the law just and deserved, is not Christian. 

Unto the thought that our ignorance makes us unfit 
to judge, and to that other, the remembrance of com- 
mon weakness, I add a third, — that harshness is not 
the method of reform. 

I know of nothing worthier the living for than this, 
— to bring your own into harmony with the divine 
will and the betterment of others. To secure the 
crown which piety teaches us the pure shall wear, 
and then gem it, is, in the eye of faith, the object of 



36 CHABITY OF JUDGMENT. 

life. In the great work of saving men, the plan of the 
atonement, as published, has made us co-agents. In 
conjunction with spiritual forces, seen and unseen, 
we serve. Unto the fountain by whose divine agita- 
tions the world is to be healed we are to bring the 
sick, the halt, and the blind. Not the pure, if such 
there be, not the strong, nor yet, again, the righteous, 
are we, in imitation of our Master, to call ; but the 
stained, the weak, the unjust, are to be summoned, 
and urged to drink and live. Unto all in this con- 
gregation is Christ, in the rich fulness of his mercy, 
precious ; unto all, in promise and entreaty, is he to- 
day near. But if there is one among you whose 
life, morally considered, has been a greater failure 
than others ; whose sins are darker, and more numer- 
ous ; whose habits are stronger, and for evil ; against 
whom, had you been caught in the commission of 
your many crimes and indiscretions, your very friends 
would rise up to stone and brand you, — unto you, 
O woman indiscreet ! unto you, O man gross and 
vile ! is that Saviour, whom I proclaim, more pre- 
cious and nigh. The deeper your stains, the freer 
flows his cleansing blood. There is hope in your fu- 
ture yet. In the arms of the atonement, that mighty 
revelation and mightier mystery, you may yet be 
lifted, cleansed, and clothed. This is the glory of 
the atonement, this the vantage-ground it has over 
all other systems. It is never over-taxed ; it never 
despairs ; it is equal to all emergencies ; it con- 
tends, and contends successfully, with principalities 
and powers ; neither height nor depth appalls it ; by 



CHARITY 07 JUDGMENT. 37 

: present or things :: some it is unmoved; it 

I v.:;:; ^"ta::;-: 
beheveth, — tc w first, and also 

The object of the gospel, and 
of gospel effort, is to save men. The Chi 
prime object is, not ; rd j isti b, : c protect 

. nor make prominent the listinctions r hich 
divide the v .rood : his : is : :her 

to better men. to lift the fallen. : 

the stained. The white dc 
using the hopeful need no encoura^ 
thus : h s e : inclination impels tow 

int. Such as walk w bees 

toward the s :ed no guida:: : give them time, 

and, without : touch : m you, they willen- 

- in:<; the ;-::y. Bu: c: 
Ekhsol youi sym- 

v, your pra — men si the 

Leshes 
of evil b 
women fallen from wh n. from 

d 

what they should I 

. - 
which have wandered like tl: 

jht companionship hich th 

who 

\U them b 
world is full The wailing and the 

fierce cursing i them. A 

. up 



38 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

There is but one method by which to reach these : 
it is the gospel method of gentleness, of love. 
Harshness won't do it. You can't drive men to 
heaven with whips. Condemnation, however merited, 
won't do it : censure never brought a wanton to her 
knees. In this thought lies the secret of Christ's 
mildness. Redemption, and not retribution, was the 
generic idea of his mission upon earth ; to make 
men better, his sole object. 

Good friends, is it not with the Church as with a 
ship which for days has been sailing under clouded 
skies ? It is time to heave to, and from the clean 
heavens take our reckoning anew. It is likely enough 
that we see things in each other averse to what we 
regard as the correct thing. It is possible, that, here 
and there, some of our number have fallen, and their 
unfortunate lapse is known to us. In all such cases, 
I recommend the words of the text. It is easy to 
find fault ; it is easy to condemn ; there is a cer- 
tain enticement in severity ; it seems noble to be 
strict : but this readiness to stone people in the 
presence of Christ is questionable business. Stern- 
ness of judgment is forbidden in our text. 

In the heart of every one, especially of a Christian, 
should exist the determination not to die until he has 
made some one better. It will be pleasant to enter 
heaven the centre of a group, and that group 
drawn thither and around you by the attraction of 
your gentleness. This cannot be done without effort. 
If you would warm frozen people, you must bring 
theru to the fire : of their own effort they never will 



CHAKITY OP JUDGMENT. 39 

come. If you would bring sinners to Christ, you 
must go to them, take them by the hand, and lead 
them up. The farther off and the deeper down they 
are, the more quick and eager should you be to reach 
them. Never fear contact with the vicious, if your 
object be to ennoble them. Some people are so care- 
ful to keep themselves clean, that they won't touch 
any thing dirty, even in order to cleanse it. Heaven 
is not a place to which God invites respectable peo- 
ple, and genteel people, and people whose morals have 
been irreproachable, and who never did any thing bad. 
It is a place where deeply-dyed sinners, pardoned 
through Christ ; where the soiled and polluted, washed 
in his precious blood ; where those weary with wres- 
tling with sin, bruised with many a fall, and scarred 
with many a wound, made more than conquerors by 
faith in the Lamb, — are invited to come, and do come. 
And when the day of crowning shall have arrived, 
and heaven is filled with the sound of harps and the 
lifting-up of jubilant hands, it will not be the self- 
righteous Pharisee, who paid tithe on mint and anise ; 
who held himself aloof from the multitude, thanking 
the Lord he was not as other men, — it will not be he 
who gathers his piety about him like a white robe, 
contrasting with holy complacency his life and ex- 
ample with those of others, who will stand nearest 
the throne, fullest of praise ; but the poor Peters, 
rash and hot-tempered ; some thief, like the one on 
the cross ; some Mary, like she of the evil spirits ; 
some Paul, who fought the truth with sword and 
torch ; and they of infinite sin, infinitely pardoned, — 



40 CHARITY OF JUDGMENT. 

who shall in voice and person most declare the 
triumphs of the Lamb. Then shall the riddle be 
solved ; and all will see how the first can be last, and 
the last first. 

O Charity, thou sweet forgiver of men's faults ! 
come to this sanctuary, and let this audience see thee 
as subjects see a queen when she returns from jour- 
neying, and takes her seat once more before them all 
upon her throne. Thus seated high above us, receive 
the greeting of our lifted faces and outstretched 
hands. O Queen ! thy face is as the face of one born 
to be loved. Thou hast a look upon thy counte- 
ance not of this earth ; a look of tenderness ; a look 
of love that is divine. I see no stones within thy lily 
hands ; and thy white fingers have never set the poi- 
soned arrow to the quivering string. But we are rude 
and harsh, and talk with hasty tongues. Teach us, 
we pray, the grace of yielding. Hold back our hands 
from smiting when we are smitten. Incline our hearts 
to love those who hate us, and make it easy for our 
lips to bless those who do us ill. Paralyze suspicion 
in us, and make us happier with a larger trust. 
Stretch out thy sceptre over us ; open thy lips, and 
into the silence of our bowed attitude, and cleaving 
it as a scented breeze cleaves the waiting atmos- 
phere, let the sweet saying come, " Judge not, lest 
ye be judged." 



SABBATH MORNING, OCT. 22, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.-GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY AS IN- 
FERRED THEREFROM. 



" Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and 
cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no vari- 
ABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING." — James i. 17. 



THE word " gift " is one of the loveliest in the 
language. It is a flower-like word, and full of 
fragrance. Its suggestions and reminiscences are de- 
lightful. It is a favorite word both with God and man. 
It is used I know not how many times in the Bible, 
especially in the New Testament. It is introduced 
to symbolize what would otherwise remain hidden 
in God's nature and conduct. Pardon, redemption, 
holiness, heaven, — all are mentioned as the gifts of his 
grace to us. It is a most significant and expansive 
term. Like the firmament, it is inclusive of all bright 
things visible to man in the doings of God. You 
might enumerate every act of the Father, from the 
creation of man to the gift of the Holy Ghost, and 
all the operations of his mercy since, and group them 
all together ; you may call the roll of all his deeds 
of love to man, and all his gracious acts to us individ- 

41 



42 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, 

ually : and above them all, or upon the face of each 
separately, one might, with the accuracy of entire 
truthfulness, write " Gift." They have all come to the 
race, and to each of us, fresh from his hand. They were 
all suggested out of the overbrimming fulness of that 
love for us which makes its channel deeper and wider 
in flowing, and limits itself only by our capacity to re- 
ceive. Whatever there is of strength and beauty in 
our bodies, whatever of power and dignity in our 
minds, whatever of capacity in our moral faculties, 
they have all been directly bestowed upon us by God. 
There is not a hope I have in which I do not see my 
Father's face ; and the reflection of the face reveals 
the mirror's use, and makes it lovely. There is not 
a love known to your life, to which is any depth or 
purity, from which come not divine reflections. You 
cannot put your foot upon its lilied marge, waking, 
nor sail dimly out in dreams upon its surface of per- 
fect rest, you cannot gaze into it from any point of 
view, and not see, far down and within it, bright and 
shining suggestions of heaven. Nor is there any 
sympathy in your heart or mine, friend, or any sweet 
impulse or prompting, no high aim or noble motive, 
no, nor any consolation which makes our sorrows like 
wounds which heal themselves in bleeding, not of 
God. I bring all these together, and string them like 
pearls upon one necklace, and lay them in the palm 
of his benevolence, — a kind of tribute ; my little 
gift to the All-Giving. 

Friends and strangers, you whose habitations are 
with us, and you whose homes are far away, know 



AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 43 

ye, one and all, that I am to speak to-day of God as 
a giver. How apt the suggestions of the day and 
place ! This sanctuary in which you are now sitting 
is his gift to you. This blessed Bible — whence came 
it? From God. The preacher's voice and presence 
— whence are they ? Who sent him to you ? God. 
This holy day, this gift of rest to your bodies, bring- 
ing repose and healthy change of thought to your 
minds, and such opportunities to your souls as over- 
lap eternity in their possible influence, — who gave 
this sabbath day to man, and fenced it in with solemn 
injunctions, and cherished it through all the ages, even 
down to our own time, and made it to you and yours 
the sweetest and best of all days ? Who has done this ? 
God. Look, then, upon this altar and these walls, 
and on this book, and on the speaker's face, and on 
the lighted firmament around and above, beneath 
which this city — the noise of all its commerce hushed, 
the voices of its tumult silenced, and the pulses of its 
activities still — keeps in peace its day of holy rest, 
and see on altar, and sanctuary walls, and sacred vol- 
ume, and living face, yea, and written across the vault 
of heaven itself, the words, " God's gift to man ; " 
and, as if he did address you through me, — as in very 
truth he does, — listen and consider while I speak of 
his gifts to you, and your responsibility to him. 

You may begin with the very lowest of his gifts to 
you, — those that come through the ordinary channels 
of nature, and hence seem least connected with super- 
natural bestowment, — even your bodily powers, — 
and you can but see at a glance how perfectly you are 



44 god's gifts to mast, 

equipped for usefulness and happiness upon the earth. 
In your own body find proof of your Creator's love. 
What grace, what beauty, what sensitiveness, and sub- 
tilty of feeling, has been given to the body ! How re- 
sponsive it is to the mind ! how willing its subjection ! 
how free and generous its service ! I know that it shall 
fail, and be not ; I know that by and by we shall have 
a better : but for the time being, for the present state 
of soul-development, how adapted the instrument is 
to the wishes and wants of the player ! You need not 
go to the Bible, to priest or creed, friend, to learn that 
God has given you much for which you should be 
thankful. Examine the ingenious mechanism of your 
body ; behold its happy adjustments, its surprising 
facilities, its capacity of accommodation, its power 
of endurance, its sweet attractions and beauty; and 
reverently acknowledge, and be sobered to-day by the 
thought of, that love that created you. Living in 
such a palace, you should indeed be as a king : the 
majesty of your habitation might make a slave royal. 
Why, friend, it seems as if one wish, one design, pre- 
sided over the construction of its every part ; the 
sole object being to give your soul a companion and 
servant of which it need not be ashamed, and which 
should constantly minister to its growth and joy. See 
with what power, what grace, what energies, He has 
endowed it, and you will soon grow to look with rev- 
erence and surprise upon what, heretofore, has awa- 
kened no religious emotion, or, indeed, been wholly 
disregarded. I know that the beautiful temple is 
defaced, marred, and in ruins ; I know that it stands 



AXD MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 45 

to-day like a castle upon which time and man's hate 
have spent their force, — weakened in all its structure, 
and robbed of its ornaments. We have never seen a 
human body as the Creator designed and originally 
created it. Ignorance and culture both have made 
war upon it ; the one has degraded, and the other 
emaciated it ; and, what these have left, sin has at- 
tacked : and between the three, joined as they have 
been in evil alliance through all the generations 
back of us, the body, compared to what it once 
was, is broken down. The power and beauty of 
its original state are departed ; and we see no 
more, in any thing like its primal state, the last 
and noblest work of God. The vase is shattered ; 
but, friends, we can see, even in the beauty of the 
fragments, what, when it came fresh from the hands 
of the Maker, it must have been. The bow is broken, 
and the shaft is no longer set to the tense and tune- 
ful string ; but in the toughness of the splinters, and 
the elasticity of the parts, we behold how vast must 
have been its un weakened power. Even now, as I 
have remarked, how it serves us ! How it toils for 
us ! How the senses, even in their impaired state, 
seek to and do minister unto our happiness ! How 
sweet are the uses of the ear ! — that organ which takes 
a dumb vibration in the air, and interprets it into 
a pleasant sound. How constantly busy is the eye ! 
amusing and delighting us with all manner of images 
brought from near and far. How the nose, through 
which the breath of life comes and goes, takes the crisp 
freshness of the air, and the fragrance of the fields, for 



46 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, 

our maintenance and delight ! What could God have 
done for you in your physical organization more than 
he has done? Look through the entire list of the 
animal kingdom, and see if you can find another body 
so sensitive, so manifold in its adaptation, so supple 
and alert in the play of its strength, so suggestive of 
dignity and intelligence, as is yours. Well might the 
great poet call it the " paragon of animals." And 
even regarded in his physical structure alone, seeing 
that God, in the similitude of his perfection, is like unto 
every thing perfect, well might the inspired writer 
say " that man was created in the image and likeness 
of God." 

But it is not until you contemplate man in respect 
to his mental and moral faculties ; it is not until you 
look within yourself, and behold the powers of your 
mind, and the more subtile but incomparably superior 
attributes of the soul, — that you fairly see what God 
has done for you. What costly, what magnificent 
furniture is this with which the almighty Architect 
has fitted up and adorned the temple of the spirit! 
Here is Reason, — that pale but lovely reflection of 
God, — which draws the line between beast and man: 
on one side of which is mastery, the powers and 
pleasures of intelligence and eternal life ; on the 
other, inbred subjection, absence of thought, and ex- 
istence that hurries to extinction. This is ours, — 
our birthright ; given, not bought ; bestowed, not 
acquired, — the sign and proof of our sonship, and a 
bond that binds us as with ties of blood to his eternal 
Fatherhood. 



AND MAN'S EESPONSIBILITY. 47 

Here, too, is Memory, — life's great thesaurus, 
where we bestow all our jewels ; that gallery in 
which are hung the faces of the loved as no limner 
could depict them ; that chamber swathed thick 
with tapestry, on which the days, like flying fingers, 
have wrought grave and bright forms, and retained the 
otherwise transient joys. Who would give up his mem- 
ory ? who surrender this shield against forgetf ulness ? 

O Memory ! thy voice is sweet, and the low 
murmurs of thy speech fall on the heart like per- 
fect music. Thy power is marvellous, — stronger 
than death's, more potent than the grave's. All gen- 
erations have known thee, and thy empire stretches 
backward to the beginning of the world. At a word, 
a motion, of thine, the past, which until then was 
blank and black, is made luminous with glowing 
deeds and radiant faces, and all manner of bright 
tilings. Thy hand passes over their blackness, and 
makes the over-vaulting and far-reaching years like a 
starry sky. Thy voice is never silent. The lan- 
guage of the heart is thine, and songs, and the voice 
of greeting ; and tremulous farewells, sadly sweet, 
come floating up to us ; nor is laughter wanting, or 
the low murmur of prayer. In thy right hand is wis- 
dom ; and in thy left, consolation. Hope springs oat 
of thee as a flower out of its native soil ; and faith 
itself finds support by leaning on thy arm. Mem- 
ory, that findeth her perfect life in God, and in 
man, according to the measure of his days, a life not 
less perfect, — what should we do without her? 
Amid our failures she recalleth some antedating 



48 GOD'S gifts to man, 

triumph, and the bitterness 'of our cup is made tol- 
erable to our lips. When pierced with human be- 
reavement, she bindeth up our wounds with recol- 
lected mercies ; and God seems dearer and nigher to 
us because of her power. 

My friends, what man is there of you all who 
would forget his past ? — that past where were his 
battles and his victories, the dawn and fulfilment 
of his hopes, the birth of thought, the growth of 
purpose, and the consummation of his plans. No 
one. And yet memory is one of God's gifts to you. 

Here, too, is Imagination, the divinest faculty of 
them all, winged like an eagle, tuneful as a lark. 
Whither can it not fly? There is no distance in 
space, no lapse of time, it cannot traverse. It takes 
a million years for that beam of light to reach the 
earth ; but I flashed in fancy past its parent orb, bal- 
anced as it is amid the far-off stars, even as I spoke. 
Imagination, thou art the greatest of travellers, and 
forever journeying. Like that fabled bird that never 
touches earth, but sails in ceaseless flight above the 
clouds, sleeping upon the wing, so thou art ever in 
motion. Thou alone art free. All other faculties are 
trammelled ; all are limited. Bounds there are that 
they may not cross ; but thou art fetterless. The 
planets know thy coming, and the fixed stars have 
hailed thee. Thou hast seen God. Thy foot, washed 
in the all-cleansing blood, white as a lily, hath stood 
where the redeemed stand ; and thou hast heard their 
songs, and seen their joy. Of all faculties, of all 
powers given of God, friends, I count this the great- 



AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 49 

est, the most subtile, the most ethereal, and the most 
divine. 

Here, then, are reason, memory, imagination, — a 
trinity of gifts such as none save a God could give, 
such as none but the offspring of God could receive. 
T mention only these three faculties : I need not 
mention more. These are enough to show what 
God has given you. Are you not rich in gifts? 
Are you not blessed? What more could he have 
done for you than he has done ? Has he not given 
as a father who is a God should give, — generously, 
munificently ? What, now, let me ask, have j^ou done 
for him ? Where are your days of labor ? where the 
long account of service ? How and when have you 
cancelled the bond and obligation you are under? 
When your Father called, have you answered ? when 
he directed, have you gone? when he commanded, 
have you obeyed? To what use have you put these 
faculties? Go over the list: what have you been 
doing with your reason all these years? Have you 
employed }^our rational powers to minister to irra- 
tional objects ? Have you used reason like a besieging 
cannon to batter down your faith? Have you turned 
this gift of God against God himself, and used what 
is of itself irrefragable proof of your divine connection 
la show that no such connection exists? Perhaps 
you are an infidel, a sceptic, an atheist. Whence 
came your power to be such? Whence came your 
ability to deny, save from Him whom you deny ? Can 
the child deny the existence of the father from whose 
existence his own existence was derived ? I say unto 



50 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAX, 

such of you as may be doing this thing, " He who 
sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: he shall speak 
to you in his wrath, — the wrath of an abused and 
affronted father, — and vex you in his displeasure." 

Or again : to what use do you put your memories ? 
Its lessons are many. Do j~ou allow them to teach 
you wisdom ? Do you not know that the highest of 
all attainments is to so live that recollection shall 
not be painful? Half of heaven will consist of re- 
membrance : the endless song will derive half its pa- 
thos and power from retrospection. Never, through 
all eternity, will any of you Christians forget the 
hour when you were born in the new birth. Never 
shall any of us forget the hour when we were lifted 
from the miry clay and the horrible pit. Then did 
we truly begin to live. All life before that was one 
form of death. Only from that point shall we ever 
wish to date existence. The converse of this is true. 
The torment of hell is bred of these two things, — 
recollection and the absence of hope. Of these two 
parents shall be born those twin-causes of suffering, — 
remorse and despair. These are the worm that will 
not die, and that awful fire that cannot be quenched. 
Your suffering will not be an infliction, but a conse- 
quence, — just as it is here and now. You will not be 
blasted as by a shaft of lightning : the fire shall be 
within yourself, self-kindled, self-fed, making your im- 
mortality an immortality of ill. How much is there 
back of you, friend, yoa would like to forget ? how 
much of wickedness that you have partially covered, 
but which, when the diversions and pursuits of the 



AND MAX'S RESPONSIBILITY. 51 

world are no longer for a refuge, will stand forth ex- 
posed as in the day of commission ? Then shall that 
deed arise ; then shall that thought stand forth ; then 
shall that crouching lust spring up in its revolting 
vileness : and they will point their fingers at you, and 
say, " Thou art the man ! " " Thou art the woman ! " 
For the clay hasteth on, yea, is even nigh unto us, 
when we must own all these children of the mind, be 
they white or black ; when they will swarm about us, 
and say to Him who shall then be sitting in judg- 
ment, " This is our father and our mother ! " 

And, lastly, imagination, — what have you been 
doing with that ? Upon what missions have you sent 
it? Upon what has this great artist of the mind 
been busy ? What pictures have you commanded it 
to produce ? Have you sent it out as a pioneer to 
corruption, and made the debauchery of anticipation 
tenfold greater than the debauchery of act ? What 
are you doing with it clay by day ? Do you fill its 
hand with tare-seeds, and send it forth over all the 
field of your future life, compelling its unwilling 
palms to sow for a dire harvest ? or have 3*011 even 
debauched it, until its former divine repugnance to 
such service is lost, and it delights itself in wicked- 
ness ? Are any of you convicted ? and do you say, 
" Tell me, tell me, of some power within or above 
myself by which I can call in the winds that I have 
sown, and thereby escape the fearful reaping of the 
whirlwind" ? 

My friend, that power exists alone in Christ. In 
him I found the potver ; in him hundreds of others 



52 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, 

here this morning found it. Of this fact we beat 
our testimony before you to-day. We bear our tes- 
timony, I ask you to note, to a reality which we 
have tested and experienced. The witness is within 
us, — in the memory of former weakness converted 
into power; in the remembrance of failures subse- 
quently changed to triumphs ; and, what is dearer 
and sweeter' yet, the consciousness of growing 
strength which we feel springing up within us day 
by day. Could evidence be stronger ? Could proof 
be more direct ? He alone, we say, can forgive your 
abuse of reason ; he alone can take remorse from 
recollection, even by washing out the record of the 
transgression which feeds it ; he alone can restore 
your imagination to its original purity, and make it 
as familiar with spiritual sights and uses as you have 
made it with sensual. And so you see that the be- 
stowments of grace are even greater than the be- 
stowments of nature ; and that, in this offer to rectify 
the misadjustment of your faculties, God does more 
for you than he did even in their endowment. The 
mercy which forgives and reforms is greater than the 
goodness that created. 

Here, then, you stand, with your house unsteady 
above your heads, and the western horizon full of ap- 
proaching storm. Here, then, you stand, morally in 
ruins, not a faculty doing its originally- appointed 
work, not a capacity free from abuse, not a column 
of power in its proper place ; and the great Architect 
comes down to you, and standing by your side, and 
calling your attention to the condition you are in, 



AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 53 

says, " See, my child, what a building I built for you 
to inhabit ! — how marred, how defaced, how untena- 
ble, it is ! Come, join with me, and let us restore it to 
its former beauty and fitness. Here are the materials," 
he says ; " here are friends to assist you : I will stay 
with you to direct." What more could you ask, 
friend ? Realize the fulness of the offer : every power, 
every faculty, every lost grace, every shattered virtue, 
shall be restored ; and your soul, forgiven of all its 
faults, cleansed of all its stains, perfected in all its 
parts, shall return at death unto the God that gave it. 

This is the overture : who will accept it ? Who 
is willing to take the responsibility of a refusal ? If 
any, speak, that we may know who, on God's holy 
day, in God's own house, and when entreated by the 
Spirit, spurns the offer of his grace. Speak, that we 
may separate ourselves from you, lest the conse- 
quences of an affront from which we shrink, but 
which you are reckless enough to put upon the All- 
Powerful, may fall, too, on us, and the innocent suffer 
with the guilty. 

I know what delay the Tempter will suggest ; what 
excuses he will put into your mouths ; how he will 
urge you to procrastinate ; how, from this moment, he 
will strive to divert j^our minds, and banish from your 
thoughts the duty and obligation of gratitude. Say 
that you will not be deceived ; say, that, being fore- 
warned, you will be on your guard. I will not mul- 
tiply words : I hold back the feelings that struggle 
for utterance. My feelings are nothing here or there : 
your feelings are the things to be considered : the 



54 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, 

condition of your soul, not mine, is the point at issue. 
My exhortation would not help you : it is action on 
your part, and not words from me, that will save you. 
I care not how. Let it be in the thunders of a 
guilty conscience, in the whirlwind of remorse, or in 
the still small voice of child-like submission, burying 
its face in the robes of his offended fatherhood. I 
care not how. I only pray that God may stand mani- 
fested in power and love before you on the summit of 
this opportunity, here and now. 

I beg you to remember that he has already done, 
both in the way of nature and of grace, all that can 
be done for you. There is no mercy held in reserve, 
to meet difficult cases, yet to be revealed. There is 
no unopened fountain of compassion lying back of 
Calvary, into whose waters, powerful to cleanse, you 
can in your dying-hour plunge. When Christ died, 
all that God could do was done. Heaven retired 
within itself at that exhibition of its sympathy^ and 
watches in silence the issue of its last endeavor. 
That endeavor has reference to each individual life. 
The eyes of the multitude are on you, friend ; and 
the thrones of heaven lean and listen to hear the re- 
sult. What is it to be ? I feel the breath of a great 
aspiration upon me. If I could only sweep back 
the firmament ; if I could draw aside, even for one 
moment, the curtains of blue and gold behind which 
heaven is, where are the angels, and the spirits of 
just men made perfect, and that great crowd of wit- 
nesses of which Paul speaks, and, in the centre of 
them all, Christ himself, who suffered and died that 



AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 55 

heaven might be yours ; and you might see how intent 
and anxious they are. watching you amid a silence 
so deep that they can hear your very hearts beat, — 
what would you see ? Look within your heart, and 
answer. If penitence is there, joy, joy unutterable ; 
if hardness and indifference, sadness and dismay : 
" Never,' 3 they say. " shall that man have another such 
a chance ; never shall he be saved ! " 

Let me ask you this question : Why do you fight 
so against God ? Why do you turn so rebelliously 
against your heavenly Father, even in his own house ? 
Why do you hear with such cool indifference, with 
such sluggishness of mind, with such obstinacy of 
will, his courteous and tender overtures ? You 
treat him as if he were in the wrong, and you right. 
You give him no election. Xo government under 
heaven could forgive rebels while they continued to 
fight. Precedent to all pardon, there must be sub- 
soil. Submit, then, all ye who, in act and word 
and thought, are in arms against the government of 
wrath of God, and of all holy beings, shall 
abide on you. 

Observe, I make no imprecation. " Vengeance is 
mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.*' I only inter- 
results from their causes ; I only declare the 
plain, unmistakable sequence of your position. I 
only say. that touching moral duty, touching spir- 
itual relation, touching your position before God, 
you are wrong ; and you must right yourselves 
while you may, or you will receive in full measure 
the consequences of your refusal. 



56 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN, 

I query about the decisions that are now being 
made in this congregation. I picture to myself the 
multitude of your thoughts. Which way do they 
set ? What will be the issue of this morning's de- 
bate ? I know that you have the power to resist. 
You have power to harden your hearts. You can 
brace yourself against the persuasions of the Spirit, 
even as, when a stubborn and fractious child, you 
were wont to brace yourself against a father's com- 
mand or a mother's entreaty. But what an act it 
will be ! How it will recoil on you, as all wrong does 
on wrong-doers! Let me say something to you. It 
is this : No man ever crushed down a good inclina- 
tion in his heart, and did not suffer for it. If there 
be any stirrings in your heart, friend, any quickening 
of conscience that has long lain dormant, any break- 
ing-down of an indifference that has become habitual 
to you, any going-forth of your soul towards God, I 
charge you not to stifle, not to disregard it. I be- 
seech you to behold in this travail of your mind the 
premonitions of the new birth. Why, friend, the 
Spirit is striving with you. These are the voices, more 
direct, more solemn, more potent, than any verbal 
exhortation, which declare, as though an angel from 
heaven bore testimony to you, that " now is the ac- 
cepted time, now is the day of salvation." Who of 
you in all this crowd believes that this is the day 
of his salvation ? Who of you feels that you have 
come this morning face to face with the supreme 
opportunity of your life ? 

My friends, I rejoice with joy unspeakable that 



AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. 57 

many of you are not ungrateful for the gifts given 
you of God. You have bowed your heads above the 
table, and thanked him for your " daily bread ; " amid 
the luxury and comfort of your homes, you have 
thanked him for your wealth; with clasped hands, and 
hearts too full for speech, you have thanked him for 
your loves ; by cradle and grave has the multitude of 
his mercies risen up before you ; and more than once 
have you exclaimed with the Psalmist, " Praise the 
Lord, O my soul ! and forget not all his benefits." 

We know not what is ahead. We know not what 
calamity may smite, or what disaster befall us. Our 
future is one vast vault of uncertainty. In it, if stars 
there be, they are veiled. If any sun is set within its 
sombre dome, its beams are shortened, and it shines 
not on our faces to-day. Friends may desert, and 
foes be multiplied ; health may fail, and wealth take 
to itself wings, and fly away ; the vase of your bright- 
est hope may be shivered, and fragrance leave its 
scented rim : but this I know, and of this I exhort 
all of you to be persuaded, that God will never fail 
you. His gifts will never cease. In him "is no varia- 
bleness, neither shadow of turning." Behind and be- 
yond all darkness, and shining through it, I see the orb 
of his love, armed on all sides with beams, and lifted 
jsly by the law of its own sublime motion. 
And when we have come to the radiant border of that 
hemisphere whither our feet tend, and from that bed 
— which the languages of this world call the bed of 
death, but on which, as a child far fairer than the 
parent, out of the travail of this life is born the ever- 

3* 



58 GOD'S GIFTS TO MAN. 

lasting — gaze off with eyes growing dim to all else, 
but more open to it, we shall see the orb of God's 
love shining in meridian glory above us, nevermore 
to be veiled by reason of any blindness in us, never- 
more to be obscured by the occurrence of evil cir- 
cumstances ; for we all shall be changed from glory 
to glory when mortality is laid down, and we are 
clothed upon once and forever with the immortal, 



SABBATH MORNING, OCT. 29, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.-THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF SEEMING TO BE BETTER 
THAN YOU REALLY ARE. 

"Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad 
countenance; for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear 
unto men to fast. verily, i say unto you, they have their reward." 
— Matt. vi. 16. 

THE age in which it was the lot of Christ to live 
when on the earUh was eminently a formalistic 
one. In Palestine the Pharisee held sway ; and the 
Pharisee was the highest expression of show and 
formalism. He belonged to a class whose creat ob- 
ject was to seem to be good. He strove by all meth- 
ods known to cunning and artifice to impress people 
with a sense of his sanctity. To this his dress, his 
mannerism of speech and bearing, his zeal and indus- 
try, alike tended. His life was essentially a false one ; 
and religion, if loved at all, was loved chiefly because 
it supplied the means of his personal elevation. 

The Pharisee hated Christ, not so much because he 
claimed to be the Christ, but because one so unlike 
himself should claim to be the long-expected Messiah. 
It was the simplicity and reality of tlu 1 Saviour's 
piety which provoked and enraged him. He saw at 

59 



60 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

a glance that Jesus was totally unlike and antagonis- 
tic to himself and his class ; and that, if Christianity 
should prevail, Phariseeism must go down. If the 
Nazarene was right, then he and his companions were 
all wrong ; and he knew that the people would soon 
perceive it. So long as Christ lived, so long as he 
was moving about among the people, that system of 
scriptural interpretation, and that type of piety which 
was the pride and strength of the Pharisaical class, 
were unsafe. To kill Christ, was, therefore, the only 
way, at least the quickest and surest way, of saving 
themselves. They watched him, therefore ; they put 
spies upon his track ; they dogged him at every turn ; 
they stretched wires across his path to trip him. At 
last, and because the perfectness of his teaching and 
conduct drove them to it, they made up a lie against 
him, bribed one of his own followers to betray him, 
and so murdered him, 

My object, to-day, is to hold up before you, as 
something to shun, a piety of mere habit, of form, of 
feature, of appearance. There is a vast difference 
between an orthodox Pharisee and an orthodox Chris- 
tian. An evangelical who is evangelical only in the 
form of his prayers, in the intellectual cast of his 
mind, is the greatest impediment that the gospel has 
to overcome to-day. Such an obstacle is the best 
for his purpose that Satan can heave up in the path of 
advancing truth. What we need is, not more appear- 
ance of piety, but piety ; not more professors and pro- 
fessing, but more actual exemplification of the truths 
professed. The Divine Word needs an incarnation in 



SEEMING TO BE BETTEK THAN YOU ARE. 61 

the person of every man and woman who nominally 
follows the Lord Jesus. We should prolong, as it 
were, his presence on earth, and, by our likeness to 
him, make his stay perpetual. In one sense, Christ 
has left this earth ; that is, his body is no longer with 
us : but in a larger sense he is still with us, and will 
continue to be while there is a single soul that thinks 
as he thinks, and feels toward man and God as he 
feels. Seeming is weakness ; being is strength. All 
exaggeration of piety has, in the long-run, a disastrous 
result. When promise exceeds performance ; when 
verbal consecration is great, and actual consecration is 
small; when great expectations are raised, only to be 
disappointed, — then may all who sincerely desire the 
progress of religious principles be alarmed. Whoever 
serves God only or chiefly in appearance is his worst 
foe. Christians should be what they seem. 

Now, I ask you to observe what a Christian has in 
appearance. A professor has, in the first place, a 
knowledge of sin. His every act and word says it. 
He declares that he understands it in its cause and its 
effect. To him it is no vague and indefinite element, 
but a deadlv and active agent, working evil, and evil 
only. He has observed its effect on others, and also 
noted its influence on himself. Others may be de- 
ceived: he cannot be. The marks of its teeth are 
on him, and he never can forget. Others may play 
and dally with it; he never: others may be amused 
and deluded by its fair or grotesque appearance ; but, 
through every mask it a<>umes, he sees and recog- 
nizes the glitter of its deadly eyes. There is not a 



62 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

man here, I suppose, but that regards sin in its coarser 
forms as detestable, but that, in a general sense, con- 
demns it. But the Christian is a man whose knowledge 
goes farther than this. He sees not only that it is de- 
testable, but that it is dangerous. To him it is not 
merely a shadow darkening the sweet light of the 
world : it is a miasma, a pestilence, carrying con- 
tagion and blight to all that is healthy and pure and 
noble on the earth. Its presence is plague ; its touch 
is leprosy. 

Now, a man with such knowledge, such swift and 
far-reaching discernment, must be affected by it. His 
thought, his speech, his conduct, are not as are 
the thought and speech and conduct of other men. 
His intelligence is too close, too accurate, too over- 
whelming, to leave him any election. He must op- 
pose, he must abhor, he must fight it. His knowledge 
begets an antagonism which is irrepressible. Wher- 
ever met, in whatever form, he is for its overthrow 
and annihilation. His life becomes a warfare, his 
years a crusade. He makes no compromises ; he ac- 
cepts no truce ; he consents to no surrender. If he 
yields, it is only to superior force. If he dies, his 
dying thought is hostility; his dying exclamation, 
" Lord, how long, how long ? " 

In addition to his knowledge of sin, the Christian, 
in appearance, is inspired by nobler motives than 
other men. 

The world at least is honest. The unconverted 
make no profession of extraordinary honesty. The 
unconverted man in business or pleasure acknowl- 



SEEMING TO BE BETTEB THAN YOU ARE. 63 

edges no higher motive than self. The throne he 
builds is for himself or his children : his empire is 
this world ; beyond the grave he has no possession : 
this he confesses. His wreath is a wreath which will 
fade, his mansion a residence which will one day 
stand tenantless. His ear is content with the music 
of this world, and his heart beats to the impulses of 
this life alone. 

Not so with the Christian. He lays claim to a su- 
perior virtue. He aspires to a higher throne, and to 
a mansion beyond the gates of pearl, whose doors 
will never be closed, whose chambers will never be 
silent. 

He mingles, it is true, with the affairs of the mul- 
titude ; but he mingles as salt, to savor and purify 
them. His plans and actions enter into the bulk of 
human effort ; but they enter as leaven does when it 
is kneaded into the unprepared loaf. He is the buoy- 
ant, airy element in the heavy, inert mass of materi- 
alism around him. To the Christian, in appearance 
at least, self is not the centre and circumference of 
his ambition. His thoughts fly out of and far beyond 
himself. Along lines of spiritual electrology he sends 
and receives messages from the skies. Unfledged 
and caged, his hopes formerly were undeveloped and 
imprisoned : now grown and uncaged, with wings 
which gather gold, and grow their plumage as they 
soar, his hopes traverse the utmost heavens, refusing 
to breathe the heavy atmosphere near the earth. No 
one can describe the influence of this abnegation — 
this living outside of self — upon a soul. To feel 



64 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

that you have been "bought with a price;" that 
you own nothing of your own right, but are holding 
all in trust for God ; to lay your body with its capaci- 
ties, your mind with its every faculty, your wealth 
with its influence, as a living sacrifice upon the 
altar of your faith, — this must be felt to be known. 
Sensation is the sole avenue to knowledge in this di- 
rection. Now, a Christian is a person who professes 
to do all this. He is in Christ as a branch in the 
vine, not merely connected, not merely dependent 
upon him, but absolutely of and in him. He is not a 
separate organism by himself. He has been absorbed 
as a part in the greater organism of the whole. He 
has surrendered ; he has " lost " his own life ; he 
is "hid with Christ in God." The effulgence of 
the " Light of the world " is around him ; and, in the 
glory of the greater, the glory of the lesser fades 
away. 

Furthermore, he professes that a change has come 
over his motives. With his emancipation from self, 
an enlargement in his sympathies occurred. His 
brotherhood with Christ elects him to a brotherhood 
with the entire race. Adopted into the family of 
God, he is inspired Avith the sentiment of humanity. 
With every tribe and race, with every grade of cul- 
ture, with men of every color, he is a full man and 
brother. This thought is the parent of all true mis- 
sionary enterprise : it mingles as one of the inspiring 
causes of prayer and effort for the world's conver- 
sion ; it swells in the melody of every hymn. The 
Christian is one, then, who professedly contributes 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 65 

into the world's best growth, and unto whose growth 
the whole world contributes. Like a flower, he gath- 
ers sweetness from all sides, and yields it forth in all 
directions. Himself the centre and recipient of min- 
istries not a few, he ministers, in turn, unto multitudes. 
Belonging to Christ, he belongs to everybody ; and, 
being in Christ, all things belong to him. 

My friends, has any such change as this, in reality, 
passed over us ? Has the turbidness of our natural 
dispositions been precipitated ? and do we reflect the 
azure of such a sky? Is there a tribe of men on 
the face of the earth unto whom we do not give the 
warm recognition of our kinship ? Is there a sot 
that staggers along the street over whose downfall 
we do not grieve as over the wreck of one re- 
latedtous? Do our hopes so magnetize the heav- 
eD8, that we are lifted by the power of their attrac- 
tion'/ or arc we drawn by the pressure of a grosser 
law downward? Have we surrendered our owner- 
ship in ourselves in fact, or only in appearance? and 
u Christ a nominal title to our property, while 
we appropriate all the income? Are our motives 
really higher than the motives of non-professors ? or 
do wi% when you reduce it to the last analysis, think 
and act, scheme and traffic, spend and amass, on the 
same level with them? Are we walking in truth, or 
in a fatal delusion and a vain show? The fig-tree is 
tall and shapely, and it flouts its foliage bravely ; but 
is it barren in the eyes of the Master when he comes 
expecting fruit ? 

One more thing I will mention which a professor 



66 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

has in appearance : it is a desire to grow in grace, or 
in the favor of God. 

The Christian lays claim to a divine ambition : it is 
to be like God. The Bible abounds with passages 
which are as spurs in either flank of this desire. 
There are in him longings to approach nearer to God 
in the essential elements of character. He is not 
content with that development which the world de- 
mands : he aspires to that which the heavens require. 
If he studies his own mind, it is to discern hojv near- 
ly it has become like the mind of Christ. If he con- 
templates his body, he beholds it as the temple of the 
Holy Ghost. If his affections are the subject of his 
meditation, he remembers that wife and child, lover 
and friend, are to be held less worthy than Jesus. 
His whole nature is planted in Christ, as the banyan- 
tree is planted in the earth ; and, like its branches, all 
the growth and outgoings of his soul return, and form 
their union with the soil in which the parent root is 
embedded, and by which all are nourished. 

To the Christian no thought can be more cheerful, 
no reflection more sweet, than this : " I am growing 
more and more like God ; I am growing in his favor ; 
I am growing in his likeness." To the young it is 
a dim and bewildering thought ; to the aged it is a 
glowing realization. To the one class, heaven is re- 
mote ; a land to read of, to dream of, to speculate 
about; a land lying low down in the west, whose 
shining shore is beaten by unseen waves : to the 
other it is not remote, but nigh. They know they 
are near to it, even as sailors in southern seas know 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 67 

they are close upon an island at early dawn by 
the presence of fragrant boughs on the water, the 
perfume of flowers in the air, and the flash of tropic 
birds through the purpling mist. So the aged Chris- 
tian, sailing out of the darkness of his mortal life, 
meets many premonitions of heaven as he draws 
near to it, and watches with holy and delightful sen- 
sations for the moment when over the waters of 
death the effulgence of its outstreaming glory shall 
flash upon him ; and he murmurs, " Lord, I shall 
be content when I sleep, and awake in thy like- 
ness." 

My friends, what joy is equal to the joy you have 
when you feel that you are growing better? When a 
man can feel that he has mastered, or is surely mas- 
tering, some wicked passion ; when he can feel that 
he is getting the better of some appetite which had 
endangered his usefulness and the happiness of his 
family; when he can feel temptation is losing its 
power over him, and victories are being more easily 
won ; when he can feel the good impulses of his soul 
ring day by day stronger, and the evil day by 
day weaker, — he is then fast verging on a happiness 
the like of which his soul never felt. The man with 
such an experience has a right to exult. He has a 
right to hold up his head among men and before 
God. He is no longer in bondage. The fetters 
which lie at his feet witness to his liberty. Sin has 
no longer dominion over him. He has conquered 
that which conquered the world. Behind him, cap- 
tivity walks a captive ; and in the years to come his 



68 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

soul shall have a throne high-lifted and prominent 
amid the thrones of heaven. 

Now, such a man is growing in the grace and favor 
of God. God regards him with complacent affection. 
Through him he manifests his glory. For how does 
God manifest his glory ? Is it through doctrines and 
formulas and creeds ? — through confessions of faith, 
and covenants of man's make ? — words, mere words ? 
No. The man who grows in virtue, in purity of mo- 
tive, in unselfishness of purpose, in honesty with his 
fellows ; the woman who grows in patience, in moral 
whiteness, in a Mary-like love for the Master, — 
these are the mediums through which God reveals 
his nature and the workings of his truth. If every 
creed and theological dogma were blown to the winds, 
and lost to the memory of men, while such men and 
women lived, God would not lack a medium of ex- 
pression, or the world testimony as to the truth as it 
is in Jesus. The Christ-like spirit, even more than 
the Christ-spoken letter, is what we and all the world 
need. We want fruitfulness on our barren fig-trees, 
and men who will go in and eat with, as well as pray 
for, the publicans. We want piety that shall not be 
ashamed to take vice by the hand, and lead it up to 
its own level. We want honesty inspired by some- 
thing higher than fear of the jail. We want virtue 
strong, tender, and self-poised enough to send hyper- 
critical cruelty away when it draws its hateful circle 
around the weak and the wicked, and to stand up 
and say through the length and breadth of the land, 
" There is hope for the thief and the wanton in 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 69 

Jesus." We have had enough of words : they have 
contributed more to the fighting than they have to 
the piety of the*world. We want now labors of 
love ; virtue strong enough to stand on its own feet, 
and filled with self-denying affection for God and 
man. 

I have called your attention to three things, which, 
in appearance, a professing Christian has, — a knowl- 
edge of sin, higher motives than other men, and a 
desire to grow in the favor of God. Now, my 
friends, a person who makes claim to such knowl- 
edge, who professes such motives, and declares that 
he is pervaded with such a desire, is a very egotistical 
or a very good man. There are but three things 
such a man can possibly be. He is either self- 
deceived, a mere pretender, or an extraordinary char- 
acter. He lays claim to so much, he makes profes- 
sion of so much, that he must be either deluded, a 
hypocrite, or the possessor, to an unusual extent, of 
the virtue and knowledge which adorn a high order 
of development. His life is either a remarkable life, 
or it is the embodiment of the most detestable hypoc- 
risy in the world. 

Supposing it to be the latter, let us try to analyze 
its cause. 

I remark, then, that a religious life, in appearance, 
may be the result of two widely-different causes. 

First, It may be the result of design. 

The world, in the civilized sections of it, has ad- 
vanced so far in its estimation of right and wrong, 
that virtue pays. Business, in its lower and most 



70 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

selfish instincts, smiles on honesty ; it courts morality ; 
it pays well for character. There is not a business-man 
here who does not know, that, the nfore men have con- 
fidence in his integrity, the better he is off in a worldly 
point of view. The best reputation a business-man 
can have is a reputation for uprightness. This stands 
him well in hand when many other things fail. A 
young man who cannot inspire men with this confi- 
dence in him might as well retire from commercial 
life, and go upon the race-course, or join a travelling- 
circus. Neither the money his father may leave him, 
nor the good name of his father, nor any low cun- 
ning and trickery, can make up his loss if he lacks 
this. The same is true in respect to one's social re- 
lations. A gross man, a man heavy with the mire 
of licentious indulgence, a young man who consorts 
with the reckless and the immoral, must conceal his 
vicjes ; he must rouge the red and bloated countenance 
of his habits with the preparation of secrecy : deceit 
is the necessity of his life, hypocrisy the refuge of 
his reputation. He must feign to be better than he 
is in order to escape universal condemnation. I do 
not doubt but that society is full of this virtue only 
in appearance, — this lustre and polish on the surface, 
when all is rotten at the core. Like the bark on a 
tree, this covering of morality is the last to crack 
and fall off from a man. The inward fibre of his life 
is reduced to a moral punk long before his evil habits 
have wormed themselves outward to the eyes of men. 
I do not wish to indulge in any captious or morbid 
reflections ; for I believe that the eyes and hearts of 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 71 

most men are turned toward the good and the true. 
I believe the race is being lifted, and that the moral 
effort and hopes of the race are setting strongly on 
the flood ; but I doubt if any such blow could be de- 
livered at public confidence in men, any such shock 
given our trust, as it would receive should the 
hearts of men be uncovered, and the secrets of their 
lives stand exposed. I do not doubt that many a 
life, like huge trees I have seen in the northern 
woods, would be found to be worm-eaten, and per- 
forated through and through, as soon as the resinous 
bark was removed. There is too high a premium on 
hypocrisy, and too much necessity for disguise, I fear, 
not to have hypocrisy, and premeditated hypocrisy 
at that, abound. 

Some, therefore, I have no doubt, are cautious and 
deceitful by design. Their virtue is not merely in 
appearance, but prompted by low cunning and the 
selfishness imaginable. 

Second, A religious life in appearance may be the 
result of habit. There is a certain vis inertia in human 
nature which is very hard to overcome. Once let a 
person get settled down into any thing, let him once 
fairly get at rest in any position of mind, and it is 
very difficult to start him. Into such a fixed, un- 
plastic, and formalistic state a person may fall in re- 
spect to his religious condition, — a state of rebellious 
apathy and cool assurance, in which, without show- 
ing a single evidence of piety, he shall take it for 
granted that he is pious. This taking every thing 
for granted in respect to our religious condition is 



72 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

very dangerous business at times : it deadens con- 
science, and blinds the eyes of the soul to its defects ; 
it stops the ears to those warnings which God sends 
forth, as he sends thunders into the atmosphere by 
which men are advertised of the coming of tempest, 
and made sensible of a power greater than themselves ; 
it drugs the moral sense, until the eyes of our watch- 
fulness are heavy, and we sit and sleep in the midst 
of circling perils, and see not what foes are creeping 
up with malicious stealth, with their daggers drawn 
to stab us. Then it is that prayer becomes a mere 
form, and loses all saving force, and hastens us on- 
ward toward the awful catastrophe which it is in- 
tended of God to prevent. False security is peril 
in the superlative sense. Prayer itself is harmful if 
it eases conscience when conscience should be alarmed ; 
if it inspires with hope when the man should be run- 
ning about in despair ; if it enables him to drown 
remorse when its upbraidings should sound like 
thunder in his ears ; if it lulls and soothes a man 
when he should be stimulated and aroused. I believe 
it possible for a professor to be self-deceived without 
knowing it : the very exactness with which he per- 
forms his duty may become to him a matter of pride 
and self-righteousness, — a matter of reliance. Out- 
wardly, he has all that any have. He does the same 
things that other professors do, uses the same words 
that they use ; and why is he not like them ? If they 
are hot alarmed, why need he be ? If they are doing 
their duty, why is he not ? And yet all the while 
there is a certain emptiness in his experience, a cer- 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 73 

tain joy-lacking element in his life, which he feels, 
and at times wonders at. His life is a wretched, 
dragging sort of a life, after all. He does not run the 
race as one whose loins are girded, and whose hopes 
are high ; but he trails with a mechanical movement 
around the course, as one who runs because it is his 
lot to run, and not because he has any heart in it. 

There is no life so irksome, friends, as the life of a 
professor who is a disciple only in appearance. To 
the man who is hypocritical by design, there is a 
certain zest in his imposition on mankind. There is 
need of adroitness and shrewd cunning in his game, 
and, at times, of not a little boldness. This stimu- 
lates him, and keeps him spry and on the alert. His 
delight is the delight of a devil, it is true ; but it is 
delight nevertheless, and often keen and pungent. 
with the self-deceived professor, — a disciple 
only in outward habit. His life is a dull routine of 
duties, all the more irksome because faithfully per- 
formed. Each day is a treadmill, with its cheerless 
necessity of tiresome motion. Stop he cannot; enjoy 
he cannot. He has no faith in what he pretends to 
believe, and wonders how people can talk so enthusi- 

icaily of their experience as some do. 

Now, I think, if we closely observe ourselves, the 
best of us will find a tendency in us to lapse into 
this lethargic state, into this amiable routine of 
pious appearances. The frankness and candor in 
confession of sin, and of unsatisfactory spiritual con- 
dition, which, it' practised, would go Jar to prevent 
it altogether, are very seldom seen or heard. There is 

4 



74 THE DANGER AND WICKEDNESS OF 

a certain pressure in religious circles to make every- 
body feel that he must call himself a saint, or lose 
caste. Even young converts, before examining-com- 
mittees, labor under the impression that they are to 
answer " Yes " to every question touching spiritual de- 
velopment, no matter how unreasonable is the suppo- 
sition upon which it is based. I have heard ques- 
tions propounded to converts of four weeks' standing 
to -which few professors of ten years' experience 
could affirmatively respond, and yet, under the press- 
ure of this same sentiment, promptly answered. 
A word or two upon this point. Now, there are 
some experiences which come to one at conversion, 
and others come only through the processes of sancti- 
fication ; and no pastor or committee has a right to 
put a question which shall force the candidate, in 
order to avoid embarrassment, to declare that a 
" grain of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of all 
seeds," is a mighty tree, so strong, so vast, so per- 
fectly developed, that the birds of heaven come and 
make it their home. 

If there is one thing which we need to guard 
our young people against, it is a false standafd of 
spiritual development, and the exaggeration of per- 
sonal attainments in piety. I have no sympathy 
with a forcing process in reference to young profess- 
ors, any more than in reference to young horses. A 
man may assert before a committee that he feels so 
and so, has such and such views, which views and 
feelings can only come through a long lapse of years 
in Christian failure and victory ; and all the while he 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ABE. 75 

is exaggerating his spiritual attainment. There are 
feelings and experiences which a young girl of seven- 
teen can have ; and there are others which none but 
the mothers in Israel, who have lived and suffered 
many weary years, can have : and this should be well 
understood. It is unseemly for the rough and un- 
finished block, but just lifted from the quarry-pit, to 
compare itself with a statue which the patient chis- 
elling of many months has dressed into perfect sym- 
metry ; and we all know how rough the nature of 
man is at the first, and how slowly it grows into the 
" perfect stature of Christ " under the gracious ap- 
plication of God's grace. 

The ao*e in which we live is a marked one in ref- 

D 

erence to what it professes. What it needs is a dem- 
onstration that its virtue is equal to its profession. 
No one has a right to seem to be better than he is. 
To assume by tone or looks, in praj^er or exhorta- 
tion, an anxiety for souls which 3^011 do not feel, a 
piety which you do not at heart have, is worse than 
bearing false witness against your neighbor : it is 
bearing false witness against your own soul and 
against Christ himself. I search in vain for words 
with which to lift and swing the weight of my 
detestation, and bring it down upon the head of 
cant and pious seeming. What we need at this 
time in the Church is a broad-chested, open-handed, 
frank-raced piety, unassuming and honest, ready to 
confess its failings and to remedy them. And the 
best rule that all of us, young or old, can adopt, is 
this : "I will be as good as I seem, and I will seem to 



76 THE DANGEB AND WICKEDNESS OF 

be no better than I am." Such a sentiment, lived up 
to, would carry us higher up the plane of Godlike- 
ness than one might at first think. 

My friends, we are all passing onward and upward 
to God. There is to us no resting or stopping until 
we stand before him. The day cometh when we 
shall have to give an account of ourselves. We are 
opaque now ; but by and by we shall be transparent 
to all eyes, and whatever is in us of evil will be seen. 
Here we can mask ; here we can wear veils ; here we 
can conceal and simulate : it will not be so in the 
hereafter. Before our destiny is fixed, we must be 
weighed. The years drift us like a swift tide. One 
by one, each in his own order and time, we are pass- 
ing into a world and presence where appearances 
avail nothing, but where each will stand naked before 
the scrutiny of God. I ask you to anticipate that 
hour. I place you in thought before that great tri- 
bunal. Do you feel the concentration of eyes upon 
you ? Do you feel the penetration of their unerring 
i aspection ? Do you feel the opening up of your 
thoughts, and revelation of your characters, before 
God ? Do you feel the observation of heaven cen- 
tring upon you ? Do you feel the gaze of all its eyes ; 
the vision of countless faces ; the open, steady look 
of the great multitude ? If so, how is it with you ? 
Does your soul, in the strength of conscious rectitude, 
in the boldness of unflinching integrity, stand unap- 
pallecl ? If so, rejoice ; for your feet are on the 
summit of the highest and most blessed realization 
possible unto man. 



SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ABE. 77 

For one, I hold myself up to this supreme test. I 
count up my chances beforehand. No self-decep- 
tion for me ; no delusion of pious habits ; no self- 
flattery through godly seeming ; no faith in an un- 
exemplified profession : these are not masonry to 
stand in the day of flood and the outpoured violence 
of that direful wind of which we are all warned. If 
the future were black, the soul, nevertheless, might 
gather strength by looking steadily into its eyes : but 
cowardice is the weakest and meanest of all refuges ; 
and he who shrinks from facing his responsibility be- 
fore God ; who shrinks from giving personal atten- 
tion touching God's feeling toward him ; who thrusts 
religion aside as an unpleasant subject until death 
stands by his bed, fills the chamber with blackness, 
and peoples it with horrible forebodings, — such a man 
acts like a fool. Pardon the epithet. I use it be- 
cause of its accuracy ; for I submit to you all, — and 
I wish all of you to mentally answer yes or no, — I 
submit, if he is not a fool who sees and admits an un- 
questionable danger ahead, and yet makes no effort, 
not the least, to avoid it. 

I pray you to understand that I laj^ claim to no 
larger share of caution than falls to the lot of ordi- 
nary men ; and yet I am too wise and cautious, I 
trust, for that. I cannot afford to stumble carelessly, 
and with shut eyes, into the judgment. I cannot afford 
to be sucked into the rapids without a paddle in my 
hand. I wish to know, before my face is moist with 
the spray of that river in which so many men are 
wrecked, where the falls are, and on which bank stand 



78 SEEMING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE. 

the angels of help. I am not ashamed to call to them : 
I do call to them daily. I expect to in that moment 
when I take the plunge. Something that I cannot 
get of myself must come to me before that hour, or 
I shall not be ready. Some mercy must be shown 
me, some pardon bestowed, or I shall stand guilty 
and condemned at the great inspection. 

And now, my people, with the freedom of love, let 
me caution you against formalism in religion, against 
assumption and appearance in piety. Remember 
the Saviour's injunction ; keep in mind his example. 
Act better than you can talk. Let your character be 
nobler than your speech, even as the notes of some 
sweet or sublime passage in music are better than 
the words. Live so that your friends will love you 
more than you deem yourselves worthy to be loved ; 
and then you will, in truth, be loved of God. 



SABBATH MORNING, NOV. 5, 1871. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC — TRANSITION-PERIODS IN RELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS, 
" Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: 

I AM NOT COME TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFIL." — Matt. V. 17. 

THE Jews were very jealous touching the Scrip- 
tures. The sacred writings were cherished with 
the utmost reverence: the resources of patience and 
skill were taxed in the interest of even their verbal 
preservation. As a people, they were bound to them 
by innumerable ties, the presence of which we do not 
feel to-day. Politically they were indebted to them 
for their very existence as a nation. In them was 
their constitution, the long list of legislative en- 
actments, the judicial interpretation and decisions 
which explained and enforced these, and the ground 
of that wonderful authority on which was based the 
patriarchal government, — the government of a na- 
tion and race through the government of the family : 
for all this, and much beside, they were indebted 
to the Scriptures. In these books were also the 
treasures of their literature, the flowering-out of the 
nation's highest thought and emotion. Within them, 

79 



80 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN 

as in some noble gallery, were suspended their great 
names, — Moses, Elijah, Solomon, and David, — 
names that recalled all their past greatness, and sug- 
gested their future hope. To them thej^ turned for 
their religious knowledge, and built upon their utter- 
ances the temple of their faith. Woe unto the man 
reckless enough to disturb a pebble that lay against 
its base ! 

Nor was this strictness altogether wrong. Indeed, 
every belief is sacred. Whatever touches man on the 
heavenward side should be regarded with reverence. 
The conclusions of the intellect are not necessarily 
vital, not necessarily clear. A man can be separated 
from them, and no great violence be done his feelings. 
It is otherwise with the heart. When a man's affec- 
tions have become involved, he stands in a realm of 
mystic connections. He is woven in and meshed about 
with many ties. From these he cannot be sundered 
without receiving a shock which imperils his moral 
system. You cannot drop an emotion as you can an 
opinion. It is too late to transplant the flower after 
it has budded and blossomed. When thought has 
ripened into conviction, and conviction begot impulse, 
— on the movement of which the soul goes out, and is 
borne onward, as a great ship on some strong tide, — 
you cannot call it back ; you cannot undo the pro- 
cesses which led to the result ; you cannot obliterate 
it short of destruction. Now, when a soul has gone 
out along the line of some faith, and made connection 
with heaven ; when in hope and sympathy, in thought 
and expectation, it has taken hold of the invisible, 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS. 81 

and what seems, at least to itself, supreme, — it is a 
grievous thing to turn it back, and wrench it off from 
that unto which it had come, and to which it was 
vitally united. That confidence which overlaps eter- 
nity is too blessed to be lost without a dire struggle 
and much suffering. Doubt in respect to some things 
is but another name for agony. Let suspicion, for 
instance, enter the bosom of love, and what writhings 
and convulsions occur! How peace, like a frightened 
and imperilled bird, flies away ! How mistrust of 
every thing good follows close upon the heel of doubt 
as to what had seemed until then the great good ! and 
the soul that had been in all its purposes and plans, 
its hopes and labors, like a well-built tower, crumbles 
into fragments; while its very loftiness serves only 
to make addition to the ruins. The re-action which 
impels a soul from trust to mistrust, from faith to infi- 
delity, from a sense of security to one of danger or 
indifference, can produce nothing but wreck. Even 
the weaker class of minds, — those that take hold 
of things feebly ; who are not overstrong in their 
inclinations, or sanguine in their aspirations, — even 
these suffer, and suffer intensely. What, then, must 
be the suffering experienced by strong, positive na- 
tures, — natures which ring themselves tightly around 
what they love, and cling passionately to what they 
regard as dear and sacred ! To such men and women 
faith is a necessity. From it comes the natural food 
for their minds : it is to their intellects what wine is 
to the blood. — it fills it with warmth, and quickens it 
into swift motion. It kindles their imagination, and 

4* 



82 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN 

is to the dull gray of ordinary thought what the flush 
of morning is to the slaty cloud: it makes the un- 
lovely beautiful, and the commonplace marvellous. 
It provides their faculties a field in which to exercise ; 
brings development to their capacities, and room for 
the free and innocent play of all their emotions. 
Now, when such men and women lose faith in God, 
or (what is the same thing, constituted as they are) 
when they lose faith in what they have always held as 
true, and leaned upon as something steadfast and per- 
fect ; when the ground of all their hope reels under 
their feet, and they are dashed upon the earth, and 
buried, as it were, beneath the fragments of what 
they had always looked upon as a perfect temple and 
a perfect refuge, — then are they brought low indeed. 
I stood upon the coast one day, crouching in the lee 
of a huge bowlder, when the wind scooped great sheets 
of water out of the ocean, and blew them through the 
air, and the heavens were filled with howlings and 
shrieks, and strange wild cries; and standing there, 
sheltered in part from the terrible tempest, the plun- 
ging rain, and whistling sand, I saw a vessel part her 
cables, and go plunging out to sea. I knew from the 
start that there was no chance for her. The waves 
piled up against her, and rolled over her as if she 
were a log. Her masts were jerked out of her as 
though they had been icicles. The sea and the 
wind played with her, and a wild game they had of 
it; and, when they had tossed and buffeted her to 
their hearts' content, they flung her down into the 
trough of a great sea, and she disappeared in a mass 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AXD TEACHINGS. 83 

of feathery foam. She was lost. And yet, if her 
cable had held, she would have outridden the gale, and 
seryed her proper use for years. And so it is with 
some men and women in respect to their faith in the 
Bible and God. So long as it holds, they are held 
safely; but if their faith gives way, if their confi- 
dence parts, they are blown out into all manner of 
mental and moral tumult, tossed and buffeted by 
tempestuous forces, and submerged at last in that 
ocean which is forever agitated, and which has no 
bottom. 

It is just at this point that you get a glimpse of 
that grave responsibility that rests upon a religious 
teacher during a period of transition, of growth, of 
change in public views touching the interpretation 
of doctrines or church administration. How to crack 
the shell, and not destroy the germ ; how to pull up 
the tares, and not disturb the wheat, in men's views ; 
how to properly describe cant and hypocrisy, and 
not grieve honest but mistaken piety ; how to fully 
and adequately advocate the new, without seeming 
to underrate or slander the good in the old, — this, I 
Bay, makes his responsibility a grave one ; and great 
allowance in charity should be made for him whose 
mission it is to do this class of work. It is a 
thankless task to shock insensibility into feeling 
when the patient loves his paralysis. It is weary 
work to climb up over men's prejudices when they 
have been accustomed to look upon them as religious 
principles. It is not pleasant to take some hoary fol- 
ly by the throat when a crowd of respectable people 



84 TEANSITION-PERIODS IN 

are standing by and crying out "Murder! " A man 
who hews on such gnarled and knotty timber is par- 
donable if he strikes in deeper than the line, and lets 
his axe slip occasionally : you cannot make smooth 
work on such a job always. The public preacher 
should be judged charitably, and not harshly, in these 
matters, where it is easy to err ; where the line of 
propriety is ever changing, and no two men would 
agree as to just where it should be snapped. But 
when every allowance has been made, and the widest 
possible margin of liberty of utterance granted that 
can with any show of justice be claimed, still this 
remains true, — that no speaker has a moral right to 
mole at random under conscientious belief, or thrust 
his spade carelessly into the most fragrant borders of 
a man's life. The surgeon has no right to thrust his 
probe into an unwounded breast. It is, as I look at 
it, nothing short of a horrible perversion of his office, 
and abuse of his high prerogatives, when one uses a 
clergyman's name and a clergyman's opportunities to 
destroy the people's confidence in a book whose ex- 
pounder he nominally is, and the sway of whose au- 
thority over the public conscience he should zealous- 
ly and reverently seek to extend. He who uses the 
sacred groves as an ambush from which to shoot his 
envenomed arrows at passing pilgrims ; who insidious- 
ly seeks to weaken the girdle by which the loins of 
public virtue are strengthened ; who, in the name of 
religion, strives to make religion unpopular by bring- 
ing discredit upon its most correct and salutary inter- 
pretation ; who piously ridicules piety ; who uses 



EELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS. 85 

his talents and the resources of knowledge to suggest 
objections to what every interest, whether of the in- 
dividual or of the community, demands should appear 
as unobjectionable, — such a person does what, as it 
seems to me, is irreconcilable with prudence and piety. 
There is no danger, friends, that Americans will be 
over-conservative ; no danger that character will be 
over-stable, or not sufficiently susceptible of change. 
Our land is full of sceptical and antagonistic elements. 
The recklessness and ignorance and violence of every 
clime rind a home with us. The future is full of that 
heat which suggests thunder, of that blackness which 
breeds whirlwinds. The elements of explosion should 
not be stimulated. The American temperament is 
sufficiently volcanic already : it is not wise to add 
inward heat and fervor. When the axles 
. it is time to slow up, and cool down the boxes : 
. as a people, are being driven in 
all our moral and spiritual faculties too fast; we are 
high a pressure : we need to down 
i a while. Our young men — the 
::<1 the average student — are not over- 
: ial, — they do not suffer on that side ; they are 
not : they are not painfully steady 

and Lical; they are not injuriously affected by 

do nut seem to be unduly fond of 
at : their religious teachers need not labor to 
them from any supposed bondage in this di- 
QOt strive to weaken their faith in the 
them to ignore its ethics. The 
3, not bigotry or over-strictness of 



86 TRANSITION-PEBIODS IN 

views, but rather license and looseness of opinion, 
recklessness and incontinency. Fickleness, and not 
fidelity, is what we may dread. 

My friends, the past may be buried, but not ridi- 
culed. I would help make a grave for its deadness, 
but will help no one revile the corpse. With my eyes 
fastened on the beauty of the flower, and inhaling its 
sweetness, I should think tenderly of the cloven shell 
in which once lay the germ of all its loveliness and 
perfume. Only when men strive to put the parted 
shuck around the blossom, only when they strive to 
hide life within deadness, and wrap corruption around 
the incorruptible, would I resist them, and say, " Down 
and away with that which has been, but has answered 
its designed end, and is needed no more ! " Then 
would I strive to make men see that what covered 
the germ cannot enclose the flower ; what held the 
seed cannot contain the harvest. I know well that 
wit and humor have their use, and that satire and 
invective are weapons needed by one who would have 
a perfect equipment for battle. Not rarely must the 
public leader rely on these in the emergencies of his 
career. Many things which defy argument, and are 
deaf to entreaty, quail before a laugh. Satire often 
cuts deeper than logic ; and many an impediment is 
swept from the path of truth by the swing and momen- 
tum of invective and impeachment, which neither 
argument nor persuasion could move an inch. For 
one, I have no scruple to use these, and all potent 
forces of nature and education, to assist me in my de- 
sire to beat down the false and needless in custom and 



RELIGIOUS GEOWTH AXD TEACHINGS. 87 

habit, in manner and life, among men. If I can sat- 
irize hypocrisy out of its self-conceit, then I will use 
satire. If I can shake enthroned stupidity from its 
seat with a laugh, then I will try laughter. If I can- 
not put bigotry and bitterness to flight with statement, 
then I will gather up and launch against them all 
the bolts of a listfitnino'-hot denunciation. If I cannot 
reach the giant with my spear, then will I wait until 
he sleeps, and, creeping quietly within reach, spike 
him through the e3 r e. It is all nonsense to talk about 
64 legitimate weapons " in such a warfare. Whatever 
kills the foe is legitimate. Whatever lessens the sum 
total of hypocrisy in the world ; whatever clears away 
the obstacles which bowlder up the path along which 
the Church, with an ever-accelerating movement, is 
to advance to her perfect triumph ; whatever makes 
cant unfashionable, and advertises a correct model 
of Christian deportment to the churches, — whatever 
it and proper. All this I believe ; and 
yet >owers and agencies may be and often are 

id unnecessary antagonisms introduced, 
I needless conflict engendered. 

Of course I do not expect, for one, I do not see 
how any thinking man can expect, that the transitions 
from the lower to the higher, from the contracted to 
the liberal, from the mere formal to the truly spir- 
L, in administration of religion, will be easy or 
■'•t'ul. All germination comes through disruption. 
The tough shell must be parted before the oak can 
appear. The hide-bound fallow must be rent and pul- 
verized or ever the seed can be sown. True excel- 



88 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN 

lence is known as such through the opposition that it 
meets. This advertises and confirms it. There has 
always been, and I presume that there always will be, 
a strong stationary element in our churches. Prog- 
ress must ever beat its way up against wind and tide. 
Every proposition submitted to a people will always 
have a party opposed to it. Not once in a hundred 
times is a needed change made unanimously. It is in 
vain to expect unanimity. The command is, ''Fight 
and pray; " and I know of no other injunction likely 
to be so well obeyed in the churches ! The future will 
be as the past. Through fire and smoke, amid conten- 
tion and the tumult of many contestants, the banners 
of God will be borne to victory : I have no doubt of the 
victory, nor any doubt that the banners will be sadly 
soiled and rent when the angel shall group them at 
last in the capitol of universal peace. 

I say these things as talking directly to j^ou who 
must do the planning of the next forty years. The 
gravest of all blunders a man can make to-day is to 
suppose that the great issues of political government 
and religious administration are settled ; that the 
great occasions and critical emergencies of the world 
are passed : he must be stupid indeed who thinks that. 
Why, the globe is not half examined even in its ma- 
terial resources. Undiscovered laws, unascertained 
forces, undeveloped capacities, are all around us : the 
earth and air are vibrant with the passing of powers 
known to us only as hints, as suspicions, as possibili- 
ties ; known, in short, only as the unknown. In intel- 
lectual development, only one-twentieth of the race, 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS. 89 

as yet, are cognizant of their own minds. As with 
babes, intelligence is unintelligible to them : they are 
insensible to all the power and pleasure of it, to all 
its light and life. They have not yet woven or seen a 
thread of that mantle which the race, when it shall 
have come to its full stature, to the strength and 
majesty of its final growth, will be clothed in as with 
a royal vesture. The war against ignorance, even in 
its barbaric and grosser forms, is not ended yet, friends. 
The sun can traverse nearly a hemisphere, and not, 
with the searching of all its rays, find a school-house. 
in in America, we have only mastered the alphabet 
of that sublime language in which every child shall 
in 8 h >ffday talk, — the language of equal rights, 

ice unswayed by prejudice, of Christian char- 
sal brotherhood. Oh that my tongue, 
. might master the sweet mystery of that 
! ( )]> that my ears might be filled, before the 
imediable lomesto them, with the melody 

Language! I feel as one who stands upon 
tli*' of a turbulent sea, whose farther 

Ear-off shore of eternal calm, of genial climate, 
and i air, he will never behold. Others, born 

r and born purer, shall sail out, and cross it, pass 
'ii<l billows and the force of gales, and live with- 
ith themselves or others ; but not I. I, 
i who are of my generation, and those of many 
to come, will be buffeted and blown 
upon ad , and die at last, as ships, that strive 

ily to make port, sink, going down amid tumults, 
with what we strove to effect unaccomplished. But 



90 TRANSITION-PEEIODS IN 

we will not lament : a larger growth, a nobler man- 
hood and womanhood, a patience otherwise unattain- 
able, may come to us by virtue of our struggling : we 
shall brace ourselves with the bands of power by 
effort; we shall grow brawn by striking; we shall 
become mightier through persistence. 

This, also, I wish to say to you, — that I feel 
persuaded that a higher, fuller, deeper, and richer 
spiritual life will yet be known in the Church. 
Christianity — the warm, the beautiful, the sweet 
Christianity of the New Testament — shall yet receive 
a perfect expression in the lives of its disciples. Now 
we struggle most to keep its moralities : with this 
our ambition stops. By and by we shall pass beyond 
this. Now, like young birds, we aim no higher than 
the lowest bough, content if our best flight gives us 
a safe perch, and lifts us above and beyond the reach 
of crawling temptations. By and by we shall go 
higher ; we shall stand amid the uppermost branches, 
and feed on fruit which feels the earliest beam of 
morning, and retains, to assist its sweet chemistry, 
the last warm ray of the declining orb. I am per- 
suaded that God has not revealed all of himself to 
one generation, — not even to this. Knowledge of 
God, and hence love for him, and life in him, will 
grow with the growth of the human understanding ; 
and God will appear more and more lovely to the 
minds and hearts of men as the ages pass. Piety 
will be estimated less by obedience to the letter, and 
more by its harmony with the spirit. Negation in 
habits, and repression of thoughts, will not then ex- 



HELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS. 91 

press man's virtue. His soul shall catch a higher 
conception of goodness, — even that of ardent affec- 
tions justified by their purity ; of thought, rejoicing 
like a dove in the whiteness of its own plumage ; 
of imagination, so little of this world, that it fore- 
stalls death, and makes it but an incident, like what 
a transverse gust of wind is to a bird, marking the 
straight line of its homeward flight with a slight 
carve. I have no faith in the " higher-life " piety 
that is being so vigorously and loudly advertised to 
the public and the churches by self-constituted 
saints. I prefer good, solid, spiritual healthfulness 
to heavenly spasms. A man who cannot speak 
kindly and courteously of a Unitarian or a Universal- 
cannot be ranked very high up on the scale of 
;ii by any pulpit that I stand in. If religion 
to make him humane, and courteous of 
:uly has not made him Christlike in 
is not fit for respectable and well-bred 
surely is not fit for heaven. You must 
e line on these crooked slicks somewhere ; and 
that is where I lei it fall. I do not say that many 
of tip'-.' people are not sincere; but I do say that 
lerfully ignorant. Their " gift of 
it seems to me, in not seeing their 
own failings. There is a deal of loud talking and 
station done by people who would be vastly 
'1. as a matter of discipline, by half an hour's 
When a prayer-meeting falls into the hands 
• religious "repeat risible people stay 

away. The surest way to keep an unconverted man 



92 TEANSITION-PEEIODS IN 

unconverted is to disgust him. I hope every Chris- 
tian in the land will improve his gifts, including the 
gift to sit still ! And yet, friends, I believe in a 
" higher life," — a life of meditation, of study, of 
growth and love. I believe that there is an experi- 
ence sweeter and holier than most of us attain ; a 
receptive and retaining state of mind, which receives 
and reflects God as some secluded lake far off amid 
the hills receives within its clear depths the shadows 
of the mountains out of whose other depths its 
deeps come, and the blue of heaven overhead, and 
the lustrous stars. So the soul of some, at times lying, 
as it were, close up to and underneath God, capable 
of reflecting him because of him, receives into its 
depths his image, and is made beautiful by mirroring 
the beauty that is in him, and hence stretching wide 
and far over itself. But, friends, this blessed condi- 
tion of mind comes only to those who ponder and 
suffer and think ; to those who climb toilsomely the 
heights of spiritual understanding ; who suffer greatly, 
and by great sufferings are made great themselves ; 
who watch, with their white faces pressed against the 
pane, patiently, with eyes that never droop, for the 
coming of some holy and desired thing, and at last 
see it, but on the other side of death, which, with the 
sight of it, came to them, and so are they made con- 
tent : or it may be to a few specially favored of God 
by reason of something known only to him ; to such 
there may indeed come a higher life of faith and 
hope and love. 

By and by, as I think, it will come to many, per- 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AXD TEACHINGS. 93 

haps to all believing souls, come to the churches along 
the avenue of ordinary spiritual development, by 
reason of fuller knowledge of God and better appli- 
cation of the Scriptures. God now is interpreted 
only on his theological side ; imperfectly at that. 
The time will come when he shall have a far truer, 
because more complete, interpretation. He shall be 
interpreted on the side of art, and the chisel and 
sounding-string will express him ; on the side of sci- 
ence also, and the elements in all their admirable 
combinations and relations shall praise him ; in the 
adminstration of governments, and the earth shall 
know that the Lord reigneth ; in the humanities 
and sympathies of man for man as a full brother, and 
all shall honor God as the great head of a universal 
brotherhood. Now, before any such interpretation 
will b<j given to God, a great change must come over 
- and habits. The Church itself must be 
revolutionized, and many things excised, and much 

rafted. The branches are not yet grown that can 

Lch fruit. New ideas must first be proclaimed 

and received, antagonisms be introduced and expend 

their force, conflicts be joined, and alienations occur, 

ver such an interpretation of God be known or 
I. The future will see some brave wrestling ; 
and not a few of us will get falls. And yet this 
should be borne in mind, that whatever is organic, 
whatever is fundamental, in religion, never changes. 
many degrees of light; there are many 
shades of color: but the sun itself remains from day 
today, and age to age, unchanged. Ceremonies may 



94 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN 

be multiplied or lessened ; creeds changed to suit the 
fickleness or growth of the human mind ; organizations 
of vast power be built, and crumble into pieces ; 
the mode and method of administration vary among 
various people and at different times : but truth itself 
is everlasting, and not subject to change. Heaven 
and earth may pass away ; but not one jot or tittle of 
it shall perish. The great doctrines of the Bible are 
what they have always been. The wickedness of 
man ; the love of God in Christ ; the power of the 
Spirit ; the immortality of the soul ; the atonement 
made for sin on Calvary, through which alone may 
come salvation to the lost, — these, my friends, are 
mountains ; and the passage of no thunder through 
the air can move them an inch. Clouds may settle 
around them, tempests search their sides, lightnings 
scar their surface, and fires girdle their slopes ; but 
neither cloud nor storm, neither lightning nor the 
fierceness of many fires, can ever remove them from 
the landscape of divine truth. For ages they have 
stood, and for all ages will they stand, outlined in 
grandeur, their vast proportions brought into bold re- 
lief against the background of the eternal world. 

The way to bring the race more and more under 
the power of true religion ; the way to inculcate the 
divine life, and push man on in the harmonious devel- 
opment of all his faculties, which, when carried to its 
last and perfect stage, constitutes holiness, — is not 
through destructive processes of thought ; not through 
a philosophy antagonistic to the plan of salvation as 
published in the Gospels ; not through criticism, and 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AXD TEACHINGS. 95 

demolition of men's faith. Nor does it lie in the 
direction of mental gymnastics and a culture super- 
ficial ; because it does not meet the deep, spiritual ne- 
cessities of the soul. There is a life better than the 
brain-life, and a wisdom higher than the knowledge 
of books. Because the religious expression of this 
age is imperfect, religion is not to be discarded, but 
carried up through successive stages of development, 
until it finds a perfect expression in the conscience 
and conduct of the nation and of the race. It is as a 
flower in the bud. Its floral state is not yet reached. 
It needs time; it needs culture; it needs the suc- 
cession of days and nights, each operant in their way, 
and the changeful ministries of earth and sky ; and, 
when these have come to it in full measure, it shall 
flower out, and the whole world be filled with its fra- 
grance. And none are so mistaken as those who 
would rudely break the stem because the bud is not 
yet fully opened. 

Error in this country has always made this stupid 
blunder, — it has adopted the destructive process. It 
has acted like a gardener who should take a mallet, 
and not a spade, an axe, and not a pruning-knife, into 
the garden. It has beaten down the most fragrant 
hopes of men's souls; it has struck cruel blows at 
tin.' tender roots of cherished faith; it has shocked 
man's reverence, and sneered at his trust in God. 
advocat* jot that a destructive philosophy 

never be attached to a successful religion. They 
who rend and pull down can never hold their own 
bt>ide one who puts together and constructs. A 



96 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN 

religion of negation is powerless over against a reli- 
gion of affirmation. Like a surgeon who forgets the 
proprieties, they have the pleasure of making savage 
remarks ; but they lose their patients. 

And now, friends, let us see where we stand. We 
are not in a transition from one form of doctrinal in- 
terpretation to another ; but we are in a transition 
from one form of administration to another. We do 
not do things as our fathers did. The thoughts that 
are the working, the leaven-like thoughts in New 
England, are not their thoughts ; nor are our ways 
their ways. Nor have we as yet touched the limit 
of change. Not by reason of its fickleness, but by 
reason of its social and spiritual necessities, will the 
future modify our work of to-day. The divine wind 
is coursing through the heavens, and our cloud-like 
misconceptions will be blown away. I am anxious 
only that the transitions be peaceful; that changes 
be in the order of growth, and not of revolution ; 
that the churches shall not resist the inevitable, nor 
stop their ears to the voice of the angels that God 
from time to time shall send to them. Bigotry means 
war ; stupidity, and excessive slowness to act, mean 
dissension. When men get egotistical, and refuse to 
be students of his will, God mortifies them. The 
age spins ; and we must revolve with it, 01: be thrown 
out of the circle of its activities. He who lags be- 
hind God loses sight of God's face. If you feel the 
need of his guidance, hurry on, and keep close by his 
side. 

The greatest question — the highest peak in the 



RELIGIOUS GROWTH AND TEACHINGS. 97 

whole range — which now confronts us, is, How shall 
the masses have the gospel preached to them ? how shall 
they be reached by the divine influence ? I confess 
that I am greatly burdened by this thought. I sleep 
at night with the moan of an uneasy sea in my ears, 
and dream of shrieks in the air, and wild cries as of 
men drowning. As I stand before you here, day after 
day, I catch the glimpse of another audience standing 
back of you, and enclosing you about as the many 
enclose the few. Many are wild and lawless and 
wicked, and some unfortunate, and they hear no 
preacher; and yet I fancy they might. I see many 
churches going up, but none for these : voices b)~ the 
score are preaching in this city to-day ; but no voice 
preaches to them. The preachers of God are monop- 
olized by the few, and religion has become a luxury. 
The table is spread with twice the amount of food 
that the sitters can eat, — spread for satiety, and not 
for necessity ; and all the while gaunt faces look over 
your shoulders hungeringly. Shall they go unfed ? 
I do not impeach your benevolence : I impeach the 
miserable fashion of church-building, and that inade- 
quate system of religious administration in this city 
which makes provision for the spiritual needs of only 
two out of every five of your population. Some of 
us, before we die, must think this thing out. We must 
lead investigation with a weight that will cause it to 
touch bottom. We must keep changing the imper- 
fect until we have found the perfect. Tran>itions 
must go on until the useless and inadequate in the 
old have passed away, and all things have become 

5 



98 TRANSITION-PERIODS IN RELIGION. 

new. The hand must not let go the ropes ; the bells 
must be kept in motion, until each sound shall find 
its proper place in that sweet tune whose line shall 
then go out through all the earth, and whose words 
to the end of the world. 



SABBATH MORXLYG, XOV, 12, 1871. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC — THE TWO IMMORTALITIES, 

" For none of us liveth to himself, and no mab dieth to hem 
-zlf. ,? — Rom. xiv. 7. 

IT is a common form of expression to say of a man 
when he is dead, that " he has gone.'' The way 
that it represents itself to the public mind is, that 
there is one less person on the earth : its population 
been decreased by one ; and whatever of force 
for good or evil he represented has suffered a diminu- 
. This conception admits the immortality of man, 
: of it as going out of the world with him ; 
tirely taken away when he withdraws from 
* ; and that nothing remains but the gap his retire- 
. and a memory that he once existed. 
N *ras to me. friends, that this statement is 

not entirely correct. The entire truth is not I 
out by this way of putting it. The fact is, that man 

and a memory behind him at 

II s ids and forces and 

thousand and one influences which 

represent power; and these remain, not for one year 

99 



100 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

or two, but for all time. In one sense, and a very 
important one too, the man never dies, — never leaves 
the earth at all. His bodily departure caused no such 
gap amid the ranks of forceful energies as some think. 
He had a duplicate form of existence ; he had two 
immortalities, — ■ one he took with him at death, the 
other he did not and could not take with him ; and it 
remains still, and always will, as his true self, working 
as it always worked, influencing as it always influ- 
enced. 

In many instances this is observed and admitted. 
The author, the orator, the musical composer, the 
inventor of useful expedients to assist industry, the 
architect, and all that vast multitude of men who 
originated new trains of thought, started new forces 
into life, organized powerful elements, utilized what 
was previously useless, opened up new paths for the 
feet of science, and set the chimes of progress to a 
holier movement, — none of you object to the saying 
that such men cannot die, even to the earth ; cannot 
remove themselves, or be removed, from the position 
they hold and honor as powers and forces in society. 
He who teaches some one to think deeper than he 
would otherwise have thought is forever thinking 
himself ; and he lives in the activities of other minds 
which he started from lethargy and set in motion. 
He who invents any thing quickens the inventive 
faculties in others, and hence becomes the parent of 
a vast family of inventions, and is perpetuated in 
them. What countless inventions Fulton's steam- 
engine has originated ! What marvellous discoveries 






THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 101 

Franklin's investigations have begotten ! How the 
poor, ridiculed Goodyear, persisting in his experi- 
ments with a perseverance so far beyond what the 
world named by that term, that it called it insanity, — 
how Goodyear still lives and works and perseveres ! 
Are these men, and their companions in effort and 
usefulness, gone? Did they entirely retire from the 
world at death? Did charity or affection shut all of 
them that God permits to be on the earth under the 
coffin-lid ? and does the grave imprison it to-day ? 
Why, no, friends: such men do not leave the earth. 
They cannot go into exile. Their citizenship with 
the race is perpetual, and their labors for man cease- 
less. 

But what shall we saj r of lesser men, whose powers 
are less advertised, whose influence is less tangible, 
— men who had no visible greatness, and yet ex- 
erted, according to the measure of their ability and 
the opportunity of their fortune, their legitimate influ- 
ence ? Is not every drop of falling rain water, — the 
same in its elements as the bod}^ of the great ocean ? 
Is not wind wind, although you cannot locate it, or 
gauge its pressure, or trace its airy path through the 
\ ens? And do not all these men, these rain-drop 
men, these wind-like men, that you cannot locate in 
■ or time, but were, nevertheless, forceful, each 
in his way, — are these not all one with the others 
in their constituent characteristics ? Have they not all 

ered into and become mingled to-day with the vast 
body of moral and spiritual influence around us? Un- 
doubtedly. It must be so. As the father lives in 



102 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

his child ; as the rain lives again in the rising vapor ; 
as the dying taper lives in the bright flame, which, 
before it went out, it kindled ; as the dead leaf lives 
again in the living green overhead, which, by its 
own decay, it has fed and nourished : so these men 
are all living still ; living in us and in others ; living 
in things seen and in things unseen ; in causes that 
we behold, and in causes which, though invisible, are 
nevertheless operant. And, with such a train of 
thought in mind, I say to myself, " Man has two im- 
mortalities : one he takes with him at death ; the 
other he leaves behind on the earth to represent 
him after he has gone. And of this representative 
immortality after death I am now to speak. 

The usual assertion is, that a selfish man lives for 
himself. In one sense, he does : in his plans and 
hopes and efforts he does live for himself. He con- 
centrates and circumscribes every thing he can lay 
his hands on within that little circle which has his 
own advantage for its centre. He makes a sort of 
sponge of himself, and fills himself with powers of 
suction, that he may the better absorb and appropri- 
ate for his own fulness whatever he touches. If he 
touches a man in trade, the man is a loser, unless he 
is as sponge-like as himself; in which case it is a 
mutual contest between suctions, and the issue is 
about equal. And I wish that all these men, these 
human sponges, who pervert the blessing of prosperity 
into food for their selfishness, and grow more and 
more tricky and miserly and exacting as they grow 
wealthy, — I wish all such men, who cheat and rob 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 103 

and oppress legally, and set a false standard of suc- 
cess before the young men of the country, might be 
penned up together in one street or section of the 
city, and compelled to do business only with each 
other: then we should all see that it is one thing to 
do business in an honest, manly, and honorable way, 
but an altogether different affair to use the facilities 
of commerce and the combinations of trade as the 
safe way to cheat and he and steal. 

The worst thing about incarnated selfishness is, 
that it does not die with the man whom it has cursed 
and used. If sin were mortal, then thirty years would 
swing the world over into the millennium : we should 
bury it with the next generation. But it is not mor- 
tal. Its endurance is interminable. It is not barren, 
but prolific ; it propagates itself ; it has parental func- 
tions, and sends its children out in swarms to possess 
the earth. I wish you all to understand, that what- 
ever evil you are tolerating in your lives will live 
after you are gone : you will pass away ; but this shall 
not pass away. One immortality you will take with 
you at death ; another you will leave behind. It shall 
id above your grave when the mound is fashioned 
and the mourners depart, and shake itself as a strong 
man rejoicing in his strength, and go forth as one of 
the forces of the world. It will be impersonal; it 
will have no name ; it will show no face : and yet 
it will be you. your worse self, unchecked, unre- 
l by the good that was once mated with it, 
and that kept it within bounds. It is in the moral 
and spiritual as it is in the material world. There 



104 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

are elements, and basal principles, and constituent 
forces ; and the laws that govern them are subtle, but 
potent. They arrange themselves into groups and 
tribes and families, according to their affinities ; and 
they are full of attractions for whatever is like to 
them: and so it comes about, that evil is forever 
growing, and must forever grow, by addition and ac- 
cretion, so long as elements are multiplied which 
can swell its bulk. Into the arcana of evil all evil 
that is generated in us passes, and takes its own pe- 
culiar embodiment perpetually. It is said that one 
cannot stir the air with a sound so soft and slight 
that it will ever cease to be a sound. The words we 
speak, whether of love or hate, whether pure or vile, 
start pulsations in the air that will never cease to 
throb. You cannot open your lips, and start a mo- 
tion in the atmosphere, which shall not, like a wave 
on a shoreless sea, whose forces are within itself and 
adequate, roll on and on forever. An oath once 
spoken sounds forever in the universe as an oath : it 
is an explosion, whose reverberations can never die. 
They roll around all continents ; they crash against the 
sides of all mountains ; they beat discordantly in upon 
the atmosphere of all worlds: the devils hear them, 
and rejoice ; the holy, and fly away in dismay. And, 
at the judgment, why may we not suppose that these 
sounds shall all come back to us, — the good in sooth- 
ing music, and the evil in torturing discord? and 
every man shall be judged according to the words of 
his mouth. Indeed, it seems to me that everything 
in man that is of the mind and soul is immortal. The 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 105 

offspring are heirs of the parental nature, and hence 
deathless. Not only words, but even our thoughts 
and our imaginations, being potent, die not. They 
live, in their effects, primarily on us, and through 
us in others, being transmitted. They fade from 
memory ; they are not entered in the catalogue of 
recollection : but, amid the shaping and inspiring 
forces of the universe, they have an eternal residence 
and mention. Upon the heels of this thought, as 
one racing after a flying opportunity, repentance 
comes pantingly. It shouts to the flying thought, 
" Come back ! you are not fit to go forth to be seen 
of all." To some disappearing imagination it says, 
" Stop ! thou art unclean ; thou art not fit to repre- 
sent me. Cursed be the sight or sound that suggest- 
ed thee ! " And to every thing evil that has gone out 
of us it calls, and petitions that it go no farther, but 
come back, and die, like some awful and unfit birth, in 
the bed where it was born. But the wicked thought, 
and impure fancy, and the unnamed evil, whatever 
it be, will not come back. They hear no prayer ; 
they laugh at the petition : they roll on in spite of 
human agony. The dove will come back to its cage ; 
for it is tamable, and, like all innocent things, loves 
companionship, and covets no secrecy: but the young 
vulture, once having broken its chain or overflown 
the wire, returns no more, but sails away on wings 
that grow and darken as they sail, guided in its 
cruel flights only by the license of its coarse instincts. 
So is it with sin. Once out of our reach, it is forever 
beyond our control : we cannot check it ; we cannot 

5* 



106 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

limit it even. Like a freed vulture, we know not 
where it will fly ; we know not on what innocent thing 
it will pounce, what it shall mangle, or what other 
sins like unto itself it shall beget. Would to God it 
were not so ! Would to God we might all undo what 
we have spoken and done and thought of evil ! What 
a load would be lifted from our consciences ! What a 
blessed ebb would drain away the great and bitter 
waves of remorse which now roll thunderously in 
upon our hopes, submerging them ! How would we 
leap to our feet, and pour out our cries, and beat the 
air above our heads with our clasped and entreating 
hands ! and when the evil that had gone out of us 
had all come back to us, and been gathered in like 
redeemed notes, and destroyed, and the ashes lay 
around our feet, representing no power, no obliga- 
tion, no possibility of harm whatever, what rejoicing 
there would be here ! and how this room would re- 
sound with shouts of gladness, and hymns of praise ! 
and you would clasp each other's hands, while the 
great tears rolled down j T our faces, and say, " Thank 
God! the evil that I have done, and the remembrance 
of which has tortured me, is undone at last ! Now, 
when I am dead, the evil that I have done will be 
dead too, and no one will be able to say that the 
world was made worse because I lived." 

You see now how it comes about that a selfish man 
cannot live within the circle of his own selfishness. 
He cannot lift the dikes so high that the ebbless and 
tempestuous forces of evil in him will not break over 
them, and sweep them away, and submerge the fruit- 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 107 

fulness of other and better lives. You men who do 
business to-day in this city are deciding how business 
shall be done here after you are gone. If you rob and 
cheat each other ; if you seek to outwit and overreach 
each other ; if you make it appear that commercial suc- 
cess depends on cunning and trickery ; that compe- 
tition in trade knows no friendship, and acknowledges 
no generosity ; that the great thing is to become rich 
and potential, irrespective of other men's rights ; that 
rivalry in business cannot be noble and generous, but 
only and forever mean and envious, — then will you 
set business at war with manhood, and make prosper- 
ity hostile to religion. The evil you do will never be 
seen until after you are gone, and your sons and your 
present clerks fill the places you now fill : then will 
the tares, which looked so innocent as seeds when you 
were sowing them, be seen in all the abounding de- 
structiveness of their maturity. The selfishness which 
possessed you only in part shall possess them wholly ; 
what floated around you in chaotic, elementary state, 
shall crystallize solidly around them ; and the question- 
able processes to which you resort only occasionally, 
and in what you call emergencies, will be the common 
and universally-adopted rule of their business-career. 
What will be the character of this city then ? what 
the character of its men and its women and its youth ? 
What use will wealth make of itself, think you, amassed 
under such a coarse stimulant, and by such tricky 
and dishonorable methods? Talk about Christian fel- 
lowship and fraternal love existing in such a city! 
why, friends, you know that it could not be. You 



108 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

might import every pulpit in the land, and crowd them 
all in until the spires were so thick, that, standing on 
the dome of the State House, you could not see Bos- 
ton Highlands or Bunker-hill Monument ; and, in less 
than six months, every minister that could be would 
be flattered or bribed into silence, and the others be 
preaching to empty seats, or persecuted out of the 
city. Did you ever know an instance where wealth 
unjustly gained and selfishly used listened placidly 
to the word of God, which, when nobly preached, is to 
it what the shaft of lightning is to the rotten pine, — 
riving it from its lifeless top to its dead roots, and 
scattering it in bits of flying punk in all directions ? 
In such an atmosphere, I tell j^ou, piety could not live. 
It would strangle as a man enveloped in coal-damp. 
When the young men in this city see nothing more 
noble in trade, nothing more useful in commerce, 
nothing more lofty in business, than money-getting ; 
when honor and honesty and friendship, in the sense 
that our fathers interpreted them, shall become obso- 
lete terms on State Street, or mentioned as " old-fogy 
notions ; " when the road that leads to financial success 
in Boston shall be paved only with trickery and deceit, 
and alow, thief-like cunning, — when that hour comes, 
if, unfortunately, it ever shall, your city will stand 
disgraced before the face of the earth, and your sons 
and daughters accursed of God. 

I know that most men desire posthumous reputa- 
tion ; and I hope that I do not fail to appreciate the 
possible nobility of such a yearning. It is indeed an 
exalted and exalting thought to think that one can 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 109 

live on and on after death ; that death is not the 
powerful and destructive thing that the unenlightened 
represent it to be, — able to break in upon and break 
up all the forces of one's life, bringing disruption and 
a sudden stoppage to all the forceful currents of his 
energies ; that it takes the visible, but leaves behind, 
untouched, unlessened, a representation of your abili- 
ties more potential than the seen ; so that a man is 
not changed, even in respect to the locality of his 
influence, but remains working where he has always 
worked, and shaping what he has always shaped, 
even more mightily after than before his body was 
buried. I suppose that most of us have felt this at 
times, — felt the brevity of bodily existence, and re- 
belled generously against it. I know nothing sweeter 
than to dream that you will leave something to be your 
representative on the earth after you have passed with- 
in the veil and become invisible, — even as the sun, on 
some bright day, leaves this for another hemisphere, 
and disappears from the e}~es of those who stand 
admiringly watching it, but leaves behind, at its 
departure, spear-like formations along the sky, and 
the air full of golden haze. For one, I sympathize 
with this sentiment, this warning. The most tender 
and consoling sentence of all the sweet ones uttered 
I hrist to his disciples, when preparing their minds 
and hearts for his departure, was this: "I will not 
leave you comfortless : I will come to you again."! 
That buoyed their sinking spirits up, and sustained 
them. This is the language of expiring love the world 
over, and in all ages. For one, I hate the doctrine of for- 



110 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

getf ulness at death, and the sudden cessation of what- 
ever good I have succeeded in starting. I would live 
so as to compel remembrance. I would have my life 
like the great river that flows and flows on long 
after the forests have been swept from the mountains, 
and the little spring, where in the beginning it was 
born, has become dry, and all trace of it lost be- 
neath the grave which Nature makes from her mat- 
ted grasses and dying leaves. I would feel that those 
whom I have loved, and who loved me, for whom 
I have toiled, and perhaps suffered some things, 
could not forget ; that when my voice was hushed, 
and the tired hand had become still, they would feel 
my guidance in a thousand warnings, my ministries 
in a thousand comforts, and whatever was sweet 
and strength-giving in me in a thousand memories. 
Who, that loves or thinks or feels the promptings of his 
immortality, would have his face entirely hidden, and 
the sound of his voice utterly and forever silenced, in 
the grave ? What generous and faithful soul can 
endure that definition of death which makes it mean 
only a union with those gone before, while it totally 
separates him from the dear ones left behind? If 
that is dying, then I am not ready to die ; nor does it 
seem that I could ever be. This aspiration I hold to 
be legitimate. It finds its justification in that great 
law of love which makes it treachery for love to for- 
get love. Some fragrance will remain in the casket, 
although the flower has been long from the stem on 
which it budded, and the bloom it had, when with 
others it hung over the tide, has departed. 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. Ill 

But, friends, sweet as it is, nevertheless it is a 
grave and most solemn thought to think that you 
are to continue to live on thus endlessly. Whcni is 
it that you are to influence after you are dead? 
What sort of influence will it be ? — how will it 
affect them ? What is there in our character and 
conduct that we would like to change, were we to-clay 
in eternity, and looking back upon ourselves ? Is it 
our manner of speech, our motive and method of 
doing business, our way of using our wealth or 
bearing our poverty ? or is it some habit which leeches 
us dangerously ? Such questions are the natural ones 
for us to answer at this time, as we sit under the 
shadow of the interrogations which project gloomily 
over us from the future. Whatever it is, my hearers, 
change it now. Now you can change ; now you can 
modify yourselves : by and by you cannot. To-day 
you can re-form and re-construct your whole life : to- 
morrow you may not be able to alter it the tithe of a 
hair. Now every thing is plastic ; your life, in all its 
conditions and proportions, is, as it were, in a volatile 
slate; you can cause it to crystallize into whatever 
shape you please : by and by every thing in and 
about you will be fixed. The chisel that is steel 
to-day will become lead to-morrow; and the sand- 
te, granite : and, if the statue be deformed, its 
rmity shall stand, and give you shameful ad- 
tisement forever. Whatever there is, therefore, 
in your life that should be hewn off, hew it off 
to-day; if for no other reason, fortius at least, — lest 
you be responsible for the evil in those who caught it 



112 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

from you. Now and then, I have seen men whose char- 
acter and influence, otherwise perfect, were marred by 
the presence of some one unfortunate or sinful habit, as 
a scar on the human face, orthemaleformationofsome 
one feature, mars the entire countenance, and is made 
especially repulsive by reason of the otherwise per- 
fect loveliness which it alone disfigures. I wonder if 
any of you can possibly be affected in this way. 
Who of us is it that is perfect in all save one, but, 
being imperfect in one, is imperfect in all ? Is there 
a man present, for instance, given to the vice of pro- 
fanity ? If so, I urge you, friend, to reform your 
speech. This is the very day and place for you to 
think the matter over, and make the right resolve. I 
might press you with reasons : I mention only this, — 
your profanity is making others profane. I presume 
that there is not a nation on the globe where profanity 
is so common, so coarse, so violently blasphemous, as 
in America. The sensitive ear hears it everywhere, — 
on the street, at the depot, and on the cars, on wharves 
and the decks of ships, in the stable, and at hotels : 
everywhere, save at funerals and in the chamber of 
death, you hear the awful utterance against God's 
name and law. What a vast volume of rending, 
riving sounds passes up daily into the heavens ! How 
the innocent and timid air shivers and shrinks at the 
awful word, the coarse allusion, and the blasphe- 
mous jest ! What patience there must be in God 
to endure it ! Who can measure that forbearance 
which tolerates, that love which pities, and that mer- 
cy which forgives ? What man is there of you all, 






THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 113 

here to-day, who can henceforth make this bad condi- 
tion of our language and our morals worse ? Who of 
you can ever again give the influence of your exam- 
ple to push on, deepen, and confirm this national sin ? 
Woe unto you if you do ! for your profanity will 
make others profane, and all your oaths keep repeating 
themselves, and roll on forever after you are gone. 
Have any of you the habit of resorting to stimulants 
as a source of health, of strength, or happiness ? 
Are any of you living unworthily, on the level of 
your appetites and passions, and not of reason and 
conscience? If you are, I exhort you to break off; 
if not for your own sakes, then for the sake of 
others. If you are not in danger of becoming intem- 
perate yourself, you are doing the very thing cal- 
culated to make others intemperate. By your exam- 
ple, you are putting the bottle to your neighbor's lips. 
The poison of your own breath you are breathing 
into other men's faces, and some will receive the con- 
tagion, and be stricken with the disease which eats out 
all manhood, and die ; and unless you are careful, when, 
in the last analysis of cause and effect, God shall 
unveil every thing, their death will be traced direct- 
ly up to you. Are any of you purposely sceptical ? 
Is your mistrust or denial of God's claims upon you 
a talkative one ? Do you boast of having thought 
deeply, and to no purpose, upon the claims of the Bi- 
ble, when you have never thought below the surface 
of personal vanity and a boastful glibness of tongue ? 
My friends, there is a scepticism that I can respect, 
and God can forgive. Some men are born with a 



114 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

strong sceptical bias ; to others, religion has been 
made to seem unreal by the hypocrisy and inconsist- 
ency of its professors. Its interpretation has been 
so bad, that they could not love it. Some have thought 
themselves into instability of faith. They grappled 
with the great mysteries of God's nature and provi- 
dence, and were thrown ; and the shock stunned them, 
and they are bewildered and dazed, and see all things 
dancing, as it were, before their eyes, and nothing 
steadfast. With such I can sympathize. He who 
voyages day after day in the great ocean of religious 
investigation is blown upon by many a gale ; and it 
is not surprising if the prow of his ship, on some 
dark night when the stars that have been his hope 
are overcast, touches the edge of that revolving 
maelstrom which sucks in many, and spares none, 
but goes hissing and grinding and groaning round 
and round forever. But I have no respect for those 
vain, talkative sceptics, who have never pondered 
any thing enough to bring gravity to their faces, or 
bitterness to their disappointment. To those whose 
ignorance is so profound, that they do not know how 
their gabbling reveals their incapacity ; who value 
their so-called scepticism as a means to advertise their 
smartness of tongue ; and whose erudition consists in 
having memorized, like a parrot, a list of questions, 
half of which, by the very nature of things, man 
can answer only after ages of observation and analy- 
sis have been added to the period that he has al 
ready lived on the earth, and the other half utterly 
unanswerable until the student stands in and is as- 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 115 

sisted by the light of eternity, — to whichever class 
you belong, friend, I urge you to remember that 
your scepticism will live after you. Your indifference 
to religion will take possession of many. Through 
your words, through your example, according to the 
extent of it, you will continue to work away at 
the foundation of men's faith, and undermine the 
hopes of many. Looking down from that world in 
which you will then stand, your honest and your dis- 
honest doubts alike swept away, you will see, day after 
day, and year after year, your destructive work go on. 
You will hear the young and reckless repeat your 
old arguments, sneer your old sneers, and laugh your 
old mocking laugh, at the good and the true. Stand- 
ing in plain sight of God yourself, you shall hear them 
deny that there is a God ; within view of heaven, its 
glory discernible as is an illuminated city to one who 
stands afar off in darkness, seeing its radiance, and 
almost able to catch the swell of its music, j'ou shall 
hear your own disciples and imitators ridicule the 
idea of a celestial life, and jest at the piety of those 
who live, upheld amid all their troubles, by the 
thought of heaven. What punishment can be great- 
er than such a destiny, — the destiny of seeing your 
own conduct imitated, and j-our own words repeated 
iver ? Change your course, friend. Leave behind 
you at death a better immortality than that. Live 
and talk so as to add to the hopes, and not to the 
fears, the virtues, and net the vices, of the world. 
Anchor yourself somewhere : or, if you cannot do this, 
confess to all that you are adrift ; that you are wor- 



116 THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 

ried and wretched, and not satisfied ; and your very- 
despair, in the way of warning, will work good, and 
not evil, above your grave. 

But I must pause : the time to halt has come ; and 
yet my thought has not reached the end of its anti- 
cipated march. The subject grows upon me as I 
ponder it. The voice of it is like the sound of a 
great sea, when the strong tides, driven by stronger 
winds, come setting landward, heavy and solemn, 
and suggestive of a great depth, and of movement 
far down, and unrevealed save to the eye that sends 
an intense gaze steadily and directly downward. I 
am thinking of that influence which you will all 
leave behind when you die ; of that immortality 
which you cannot take with you at death ; of the in- 
visible powers, the unnamed forces, the unsuspected 
tendencies, that will then represent both you and me. 
I do not exhort you : I know no words grave or 
tender enough to express my feelings. I sit you 
down, I sit down with you, at the base of this solemn 
and majestic thought, and say, " Friends, let us re- 
flect." How are we living? What are we doing? 
In what should we change ourselves ? With whom 
shall we stay after death as a source of patience, of 
strength, of consolation ? These are plummet-inter- 
rogations; and they sound the very depths of our 
duty and our attainments. 

But, friends, dreadful as is the thought that our 
evil will live after us, sweet, on the other hand, is the 
reflection, that whatever is good in us shall likewise 
never die. The virtues and moralities of our lives 



THE TWO IMMORTALITIES. 117 

shall live, and live, too, as seeds in the world. Nor 
will they be as seeds garnered up and locked within 
the enclosure of one life : for death shall be as a sow- 
er to them, and cast them far and wide ; and thej^ shall 
become, in their growth and blossoming and fruitful - 
ness, the common property of all, and the heritage 
of the ages. Whatever is sweet and gracious in us 
shall not perish, but share in the immortality of good- 
ness. It shall move through time like a scented wind, 
bringing: health to the sick, and refreshment to the 
tired. The best in us shall live, growing better as it 
lives ; each new embodiment shall give it a fuller 
expression ; and looking down from heaven, whose 
joy shall spring in part from the spectacle, we shall 
see ourselves living in endless usefulness upon the 
earth. If you and I, my friend, can leave such an 
immortality behind us at death, then will it be pleas- 
ant, and not painful, to die. Our life shall end like 
a sweet passage in some endless song, whose closing 
note is lost and swallowed up in the nobler note that 
follows. We shall go to our death as young birds go 
to their rest at night, unto whom growth comes amid 
the darkness, and they wake at morning with stronger 
wings and brighter plumage. 



SABBATH MOBJVING, NOV. 19, 1871. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC- PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 
"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places." — Ps. xvi. 6 

THE figure employed in our text is one suggested 
by the measuring of land. The " lines " spoken 
of are those which were drawn around a piece of land 
to distinguish the rights of ownership, and give one 
legal possession ; and the idea of the exclamation on 
the part of the Psalmist is, that, by the measuring-out 
or allotment of God's bounty, great and desirable 
possessions had been bestowed upon him, and made 
him rich. The word " places," also, which gives a 
certain materialistic significance to the expression, 
might with equal justice — and, I think, with more — 
be translated " things: " and the passage would then 
read, " The lines have fallen to me in pleasant 
things ; " or, " God has bestowed upon me pleasant 
things : " and the suggestion would then be of a 
wealth bestowed nobler than material prosperity, — 
even of all those blessings and mercies and gifts re- 
ceived in life, and by which it is made truly rich and 
happy. And what I wish to speak to you of this 

118 



PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 119 

morning is the tendency or influence of prosperity 
upon character, and the use we should make of it. 

I look upon this passage, friends, as the exclama- 
tion of the Psalmist when iu one of his best moods. 
He was not always a good man. He had his sins ; 
and very gross ones they were too. He was not al- 
ways in a fit condition to write psalms either for him- 
self or his people. But whatever his sinfulness, his 
duplicity, or his grossness, might occasionally be, God's 
Spirit was continually working away in his heart. He 
was a very bad man at times. The atmosphere of his 
life was often hot and heavy, arid full of deadly exhala- 
tions that rose from the mirk and mire of his passions, 
and obscured the sun and heavens, and all bright 
things ; and a vile darkness brooded around him, and 
was loved by him because it masked his unseemly or- 
gies. More than once did God have to explode 
his thunders above his head, and burn the fetid air 
dry with his lightnings, and discharge his judgments 
down upon him in showers. But after God had thus 
visited upon him his merciful anger, and put the 
chastisement of love upon him ; after he had humbled 
his pride, checked his wicked ambition, allowed him 
to feel the curse of his own grossness, and recalled 
him, as a shock will often recall a somnambulist, to 
his — how noble and beautiful lie became! 

and his nature went out in grateful expressions toward 
( rod, as a flower-garden, after a thunder-shower; sends 
its perfumes up into the moist air, loading the low-lly- 
ing breezes with odors. 

Well, as I was saying, David must have been in 



120 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

some such delightful state when he indited this psalm. 
Whatever was good, grateful, and hopefully prophetic 
in his nature must have been in the ascendant. He 
begins with expressions of devotion, which seem to 
reach out after, take hold of, and grow warm from 
contact with, Christ. Some translate the Hebrew 
term which designates this psalm " golden ; " in which 
case it might be called the " golden psalm," and my 
text a golden text, and the passage a golden exclama- 
tion of praise, of grateful acknowledgment of God's 
goodness, and of adoring love. And so I do regard 
it. It is a kind of rapturous, exultant, joyful outbreak, 
surging up from the Psalmist's heart, breaking into 
music on his lips, and poured forth into the ear of 
every age as a bird pours forth her rapturous song, 
when, perched on the topmost twig of a motionless 
tree, she sends a prolonged strain out through the 
quivering air toward the setting sun, until the orchard 
and the entire neighborhood are filled with notes and 
quavers and trills and rushes of sweet sounds. He 
was not in a despondent mood. His thoughts were 
not heavy nor raven-like. His mind was in a hope- 
ful, grateful, adoring state. 

My people, I have spoken of this in the way of 
analysis more minutely than I should, that I might 
the more impressively draw forth from it for your 
profit certain inferences and applications ; and my 
first suggestion is, that we are to regard our daily 
blessings as the true source of our daily growth 
spiritually. 

God's normal method, if I may so speak, — that 






PKOSPEKITY AS PROMOTIVE 121 

method which most truly expresses him, and which 
he loves the best, — God's normal method, I say, of 
developing men, is through benevolence. Mercy and 
blessing, love and charity, are the prompting impulses 
of his nature. If he punishes, if he afflicts, it is only 
that he may check and repress what man has adopted 
of evil into his system. But the positive, affirmative 
forces of his administration are the kindly and gra- 
cious ones. To the flower he expresses his love in 
sunshine, in the needed elements of soil, in dew and 
rain, and all that sweet and mystic chemistry of earth 
and air best calculated to develop flower-life. The 
same provision of mercy extends over the animal 
kingdom, over bird and insect, and the hidden life of 
the sea. Science has already advanced so far, analy- 
sis has already been carried down so deep into details, 
that the whole earth has become a mirror, in which 
we see reflected the tireless energies of God, work- 
ing in swiftest industry to feed and clothe the vast 
families of his creation. It seems to be a point with 
him — as one might expect it would be of infinite 
power, confident in its own resources — to carry every 
thing forward by easy processes of development, and 
along easy avenues of progress. It is not natural 
for God to toil in growth, experience sudden and 
violent interruptions, and reach perfection through 
re-formation, and not unchecked expansion. His toil 
has a restful quality in it: it is only the play and 
healthful exercise of a capacity so superior to every 
emergency, that it is never taxed ; and what lie; does 
he does easily. His power soars to its loftiest flight, 



122 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

sweeps grandly around its widest circle, with a wing 
sublimely at rest, whose motion is communicated 
from invisible forces around it, or generated out of 
the vital buoyancy of its own structure and plumage. 

I do not like that idea of God which conceives of 
him as best symbolized by an axe and pruning-knife ; 
as best expressed in the thunder which frightens the 
timid, and brings destruction to the innocent. I hear 
his progress through the earth, but not in the sound 
of sobbing and lamentation ; not in groans of be- 
reavement, and the explosions of pistol-shots, with 
which men, in the anguish of despair, blow out their 
brains. Nor do I see him in faces wet with tears or 
writhing in pain, in homes broken up, clasped hands 
parted, and the wreck of happy human hopes. I 
do not say that my heavenly Father.' s voice may not 
be heard amid such sounds at times ; I do not say 
that his sweet face may never be seen amid such 
surroundings : but I do say that these awful sights 
and sounds and surroundings do not express him. 
If he is in these, he is in them by constraint. He 
deals his judgments out as a good, peace-loving man 
does a blow, — to vindicate authority or save life, and 
not because he loves to strike and punish men. His 
harshness is judicial, not natural. He strikes at the 
sin, and forgives the sinner at the same moment. 

I fear, friends, that I do not bring my thought out 
clearly ; and I trust to your intelligence, more than 
to any accuracy in my statement, to 1 catch my con- 
ception as it stands shaped in my own mind and 
soul, rather than as it appears clothed in the poverty 



PEOSPEEITY AS PROMOTIVE 123 

of my verbal expression. But this I say, God is 
love. His nature is amiable — infinitely so — and 
tender and sympathetic ; and the natural, normal ex- 
pression of his chaiacter is, like himself, merciful and 
kindly. Happy himself, he plans for the happiness 
of his creatures. Not to separate, but to unite ; not 
to disappoint and vex, but to bless and delight ; not 
to distress and impoverish, but to console and enrich 
men, — is his endeavor. This is the spirit, as I under- 
stand it, which lies back of his providences, directing 
and controlling them ; this is the face, which, amid 
the gathering of all mists, and out of the blackness 
of every cloud, I see looking in the brightness of love 
and benevolence upon me. 

I am constantly calling your attention, my people, 
to God's nature, because it is only as you understand 
his nature that you can rightly interpret his ways. 
You cannot understand the character of a man's con- 
duct, morally considered, until you understand his 
motive. Error of judgment is not sin ; but malicious- 
3 of thought and purpose is. It is the heart, and 
not the hand, which colors the deed. If, for in- 
stance, you look only at the outward and visible in 
providence, you cannot account for, you cannot vin- 
dicate, it. The good suffer, and the wicked dive at 
ease. What would strengthen and elevate one man 
or woman is forbidden ; the heaven that life might 
be is denied them, although they seek it purely and 
With strong crying: while what weakens and destroys 
another, what is not appreciated, what cannot be 
appropriated, and which, perhaps, is perverted, 



124 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

is lavishly bestowed upon him. The lip which 
quivers for the water dies uncooled by the blessed 
drop ; while the lip which is moist with constant re- 
freshment turns from the proffered cup, which con- 
tinues to stand undrained and untasted. Reasoning 
from such data, any imaginable injustice might be 
put upon God, and the divine Governor be made to 
appear as a creature of cruel and outrageous impulses, 
a being to dread and abhor. 

You must, therefore, look deeper and farther than 
into and at the nature of what occurs about ue in 
this world, where every thing is jostled and out of 
place, in order to see the symmetry and perfectness 
which inhere in the plans and purposes of God as 
prompted by his nature. You must search for an 
opening in the cloud through which to see the clean, 
clear blue above and beyond. You must separate 
yourself from the noise and tumult and cursing of a 
discordant world and life or ever your ears can be 
filled with the coming-forth of that sweet harmony 
which issues from God. Then, and only then, do you 
see how benevolent and placid is his face ; then, 
and only then, clo you discover how sweet, and only 
sweet, is the sound of his natural voice. 

Objecting therefore, as I do, to that interpretation 
of God which presents him as harsh, severe, and 
unamiable in his mode of government over us, I object 
with the same emphasis to that conception which 
links Christian development with the sad and unfor- 
tunate in life, with deprivation and bereavement, 
with repression and disappointment. God might have 



PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 125 

made flowers to blossom under a sky dismal with 
clouds, and un warmed by any sun ; but, in order to have 
done it, he must, as a prior condition, have made the 
flower-nature different, and made floral development 
to depend on other causes than it now does. And so I 
do not deny that God might have made our graces to 
abound and flourish even by such agencies as sorrow 
and misfortune, and by a treatment severe and for- 
bidding, if not actually cruel ; but I do saj^, that, in 
order to do this, he must, as a prior condition, have 
made human nature other than it to-day is. Con- 
structed as men and women are, I hold that sunshine, 
the pleasant and cheerful, in cause and effect, bring 
them forward in goodness more rapidly than the dis- 
agreeable and the gloomj". Love operates better on 
a man than hate. Hope is a healthier stimulant than 
despair. Success is more succulent with sweet juices 
than failure. You may take poverty, and its effect 
upon men and women and children, as an illustra- 
tion. 

There is nothing I dislike more than to hear people 
with good clothes on their backs, and twenty clerks 
to come and go at the motion of their finger, eulogize 
poverty. For one, I hate it, and always have, and 
always expect to. When a family has to practise an 
unnatural frugality, it is a curse. It imbitters man- 
hood, and shrivels up womanhood. It begets envy, 
and discontent with one's lot, and murmurings against 
God. It wrinkles prematurely the face of beauty 
with the ugly lines of excessive care; renders one 
harsh and querulous in speech, and unamiable in tern- 



126 OP CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

per. It makes generosity impossible, by the exercise 
of which the nature is ennobled. It denies one the 
means of culture, forbids the mind that leisure which 
it requires for the acquisition of a helpful knowledge, 
and chains a man down until life has no nobler object 
than to obtain food wherewith to supply his lower and 
daily -recurring wants. Thus every day consumes the 
entire result of its own toil, and leaves no surplus for 
the future. The physical is thus elevated until it 
entirely overtops in importance and necessity the 
intellectual and spiritual, and man becomes simply a 
rational animal. To my mind, poverty is something 
to hate and fly from. It dwarfs the mind, oppresses 
the soul, imbitters the heart, and stints the growth 
and usefulness of man. I know that Christ bore 
it ; but he bore it as he did all the other wretched 
conditions and surroundings of mortal life, — to show 
that it could be borne, and because it behooved the 
Captain of our salvation to be made perfect through 
suffering. The saddest thing he ever said, as I think, 
and that which sounded out of a dejection and a sense 
of debasement deeper than are betrayed in any other 
passage, was his exclamation touching his poverty. 
" The birds of the air," he said, " have nests, and the 
foxes have holes ; but the Son of man hath not where 
to lay his head." That was bitter indeed; and it 
needed all his divine meekness and patience to endure 
it unmurmuringly. There is a vast deal of affecta- 
tion, and more of ignorance, in the way people speak 
of this thing, and others of like character. They are 
neither honest nor intelligent in their analysis of the 



PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 127 

food which nourishes their best growth. When I 
hear a man talk about poverty being a blessing to him, 
I think that he doesn't know what poverty is, or else 
that he misused his wealth when he was rich. When a 
person tells me that a fit of sickness has been his sal- 
vation, I know that he must have lived very wickedly 
when he was well. Because, here and there, you find 
a man who must be about killed before lie will become 
good, it does not prove that life is not desirable, and 
the right time, as the old hymn says, to serve the 
Lord. I do not say that great wealth is desirable, any 
more than that the earth would be made more pro- 
ductive if it were inundated with a flood : but I do 
say that a moderate amount of rain is better for a 
farmer than a prolonged drought ; and so a fair share 
of the good things of life is better, immeasurably bet- 
ter, for the development of amiable graces in the soul 
and temper, than a pinching and oppressive depri- 
vation. I believe, that, under the Christian dispensa- 
tion, wealth has become a blessing ; and the more a 
man has, so long as God's Spirit dwells in his heart, 
the better he will become. If I could have my way, 
— and I say it soberly, and with a great wish in my 
heart for God's glory and your eternal good, — I 
would make every poor man in my congregation rich. 
I would put comfort, and appliances of culture (includ- 
ing a piano), into every tenement-house in this city. I 
would take worry from the poor man's mind, and anxi- 
ety about the temporal support of herself and orphan- 
children from the mother's heart. J would give every 
beneficiary on our charity a home and books, a well- 



128 OF CHRISTIAN GEOWTH. 

furnished table and a warm bed, and make the divine 
exercise of benevolence possible to every one. I 
believe that a great many people would be much bet- 
ter than they are if they were not so poor. Their 
poverty cramps them and dwarfs them, and puts a 
great temptation upon them to lie and steal and 
deceive ; hardens them, makes them reckless, and 
sends them to the bottle in the hope of finding in 
unconsciousness a refuge from their troubles and a 
surcease of sorrow. I know that God pities all 
such, and forgives many. He sees the strong man's 
despair, and the widow's tears ; and his ears are 
forever open to the moans of those children who moan 
in their sleep because they are hungry. And when 
the great and glad day for which the world has waited 
so long has at last come, and men stand in the 
uprightness of that liberty which all shall enjoy, one 
curse from which man shall be delivered will be the 
curse of poverty ; and there shall not be a beggar on 
the face of the earth, or a single soul in need of any 
thing which is calculated to develop his faculties, or 
minister to his happiness. 

I am willing to bring this to the test of experience. 
For one, I can bear witness, that while adversity has 
toughened me, and added to the power of simple en- 
durance, and brought a kind of grim patience to me, 
while it has made me more set and determined and 
imperious, it has not, so far as I can ascertain, made 
me amiable or virtuous or happy. If any thing in 
me has flowered out sweetly, if any moral fragrance 
has been imparted to me, if my labors have ever 






PEOSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 129 

been lightened by the incoming of cheerfulness, it 
has not been effected through trouble and sickness 
and financial embarrassment. I can truly say, that 
I have never been tortured into goodness. Not by 
the blustering of March winds, or the descent of 
sharp-cutting hail, or the icing of pitiless frost, have 
the few flowers which may have blossomed in the 
garden of ni}~ life been brought forward ; but these 
have grown, and passed from the germinal to the floral 
state, in those seasons, when above and around me, 
like a warm atmosphere, brooded the summer-like 
experiences of God's love. To change the figure, I 
have always sailed the fastest, and steered the 
straightest, when, in the heavens ahead of me, God 
hung out some great star ; when, in brief, I could 
say, and was compelled to say, because of the very 
abundance of my blessings, " The lines have fallen to 
me in pleasant places." 

I feel, friends, that God intends this to be so. This 
is the true order of growth, because it comes through 
the right improvement, and not the perversion, the 
use, and not the abuse, of his blessings. If you have 
health, then you should be better because of your 
health ; if beauty, then )~ou should be nobler be- 
cause of j'our beauty ; if riches, then your riches 
should assist your soul in its divine growth. Any 
other philosophy than this reverses the order of 
God's government, and converts favorable into un- 
favorable conditions of life. Any other analysis com- 
pels us to mistrust his wisdom, and impeach his be- 
nevolence ; for the favorable in nature and grace 

6* 



130 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

certainly has precedent of the unfavorable. Light 
performs more ministries to the vegetable kingdom 
than darkness ; day ripens more seed than night. 
Adam was originally located in Eden, and was ban- 
ished only when it was shown that he did not appre- 
ciate the blessing. 

In addition to this primal law in his economy, 
God is continually sending extraordinary mercies 
to us, and stirring men by extraordinary stimulants. 
He enriches life by those benefactions which come in 
the way of surprises, and are notably of him because 
so potential for good. Life, as you all know, is not 
measured by time, but by events and experiences. 
Now and then a great event occurs, so notable and 
impressive, that it possesses the memory and imagina- 
tion, and all our after-actions are dated from it. Some 
death, some birth, some calamity, some mighty deliv- 
erance from danger, — these furnish divisions for our 
calendar, and mark the epochs of our lives. Some- 
times a great and divine love, being conceived of God, 
is born within one, so gracious, so superior, that it 
makes all one's nature seem only as the manger in 
which it lies ; while every reverent faculty, guided by 
the star of its faith, brings to it myrrh and frankin- 
cense, and it becomes to the man his savior. More 
than one man has been saved in this way, — saved 
from despondency, from temptation, from sin. Every 
soul must have some divine impulse in it, or it will 
never move on in the divine life. Every pilot must 
have some landmark, some beacon, some star, to steer 
by, or his hand will let go the wheel in doubt and 



PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 131 

sheer despair. And when such an experience is 
granted one ; when the best in him is brought out by 
contact with something better than itself; when con- 
nection with purity elicits purity, and a hope holier 
than he ever had known springs up within him, and 
takes a celestial form, and bends over him with a face 
like a star, — how it enriches, how it glorifies him ! 
Forces in his nature, hitherto unknown, are felt, as 
the sap in spring-time is felt in the tree ; and his fac- 
ulties leaf out, and all his graces, which had existed 
only as possibilities, bud and blossom, and become 
actual. His capacities are multiplied: what was 
dormant is aroused to action ; and the dead sea-level 
of life breaks into ripples under the heavenLy im- 
pulse, and his energies go voyaging forth in the swift 
traffic of benevolence like ships with flowing sails. 
What a change has come over the man ! He labors 
now like birds, who sing as they toil at their nest- 
building. Duty becomes joy, and service tuneful ; 
self-denial is a pleasure, and spending a gain. 

Surely, friends, 3*011 understand what I mean. You 
have had such seasons; 3-011 have had such blessings. 
You know I am speaking of causes which have 
wrought the noblest and sweetest results of 3-our 
lives ; of influences that have made 3'ou happy as 
in' fliers and fathers, as husbands and wives, as 
brothers and sisters and lovers ; of experiences which 
e a revelation in themselves, and without which 
you would never have known the length and breadth, 
the bright and depth, either of God's love or of 
your own nature. These deep and holy feelings are 



132 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

revelations, sweetly revealing sweet things in us. 
Without them we should never have known how 
much we could suffer or enjoy. They put a new and 
larger definition to happiness ; enlarge the circumfer- 
ence of our being, until we are astonished at how 
much we can include and appropriate ; and we walk 
about and think and dream in a kind of bewilder- 
ment, and are strangers unto our old self. We won- 
der how we could have been so selfish, so content with 
the old state of things. The sights and sounds and 
experiences that filled us formerly are so meagre now ! 
We had lived on husks, without knowing it, until we 
had a taste of the divine bread ; but now we fare and 
feel as the children of kings, whose natures and con- 
dition are royal. Have you never seen a man lifted 
suddenly out of selfishness, and made generous, by 
the incoming of such a power to his soul ? Have you 
never seen rudeness teach itself the mannerisms of 
courtesy? Have you not seen the naturally in- 
dolent made industrious, the sluggish active, the 
rough become gentle, and the sceptical taking kindly 
and reverently to the habits of devotion, under the 
stimulant of such causes ? Why, friends, it is that 
man may have light by which to walk that God has 
set the sun in the heavens by day, and the moon and 
stars at night. It is that grasses may grow, and trees 
thrive, and flowers blossom, and every seed ger- 
minate, that he has filled the skies with warmth, the 
clouds with rain, and the air with refreshing agita- 
tions. This is their mission. In all these God's 
.benevolence is heard, and heard, too, in melody 



PROSPFHrTY AS PROMOTIVE 133 

throughout the world. And so it is in the case of his 
ministrations to the moral and spiritual development 
of man. He elicits growth by attractions too sweet 
to be resisted. He centres upon us powers as potent 
as is the solar beam to the uplifted flower : we can- 
not droop ; we cannot remain pent ; our faculties 
will lift themselves, and unfold in all their maturing 
loveliness, in the face of those irresistible and gra- 
cious forces streaming downward upon them from 
him. 

A few words, now, in the way of direct application. 
And, in the first place, let us who have been favored 
in the circumstances of our life call up in remem- 
brance, and make mention before the Lord, all his 
benefits to us. You have memories : exercise them, 
a moment, in the way of reminiscence. Many of you 
who are before me are advanced in years. It is a 
long road you have travelled, friend, since you came 
to this city as a boy. There have been steep places in 
it, and sudden turns. Some of you are higher in wealth 
and reputation than you ever expected then to stand. 
You were ambitious ; but ) r ou have gained more than 
you had hope or knowledge to anticipate. You 
never expected to be as rich, or as honored, or as 
well known, as jou are. God has done great things 
for you. He has co-operated with you in his provi- 
dence; he has delivered you in sickness, and more 
than once warded from you a sudden and violent 
death: though a thousand fell at your right hand, 
and ten thousand at j 7 our left, yet you have not been 
moved. And you stand before us to-day, your family 



134 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

and property grouped around you, a monument of 
God's preserving and fostering care. How has all 
this affected you ? how does it affect you to-day ? 
Has wealth made you grasping? Has prominence 
made you vain ? Has success quickened your grati- 
tude, and rendered you child-like before Him who 
has given you all you have, and made you all you 
are? Are you making to-day a right use of your 
prosperity ? Has your obedience been that of love, 
or that of fear? Have you been as children who 
need only to know the parent's wish, or as children 
who care nothing for the parent's wish unless it is 
sustained and made potential with a threat ? 

Again: I ask you to reflect upon and call over in 
mind the manifold mercies of God to you and yours. 
Go over the long and glorious list. Think of him 
more as the source of your present blessings than 
as the source of future penalty. To some, I fear, 
God is ever and only a judge : they never think of 
him in any other capacity. They never see him save 
as they telescope him through the distorting lenses 
of guilt and fear. Reform yourself, friend, and let 
your conception of him be a more worthy and just 
one. He is not only a judge : he is your father ; you 
are his child. Look up, then, into his face; and 
when you see its kindness, its beaming benevolence, 
its outshining and yearning love, smiles will come, or 
tears will start. The thought of God's kindness 
quickens more penitence than the fear of his wrath. 
Terror makes runaways ; but confidence brings the 
wanderer home. 



PROSPERITY AS PROMOTIVE 135 

Never will I perpetuate a theology of glconi. If 
the whirlwind and flame in the olden time, when 
men's minds were darkened and men's habits gross, 
could not reveal God, how much less may they now ! 
If the warm rains and the gentle dews and bright 
sun cannot make the garden fragrant, and load the 
vines with purple fruitfulness, then, sure, the thun- 
der cannot do it. I know that thunder is, at inter- 
vals, a beneficence. Concussions and atmospheric 
explosions serve their purpose in the economy of 
nature. Flame and shock are needed. But these, I 
also know, and so do you, are exceptional meth- 
ods, — the resorts and expedients, and not the usual 
processes through which the - God of nature min- 
isters to his own. If I were telling you of some 
dearly-loved friend, some noble and generous man or 
perfect woman, I should not describe how he looked 
in some moment of anger, when he found himself 
imposed upon, and his features were set as iron, and 
his eyes blazed with a light grand, but terrible. 
Although his anger was legitimate, and his wrath fully 
justified by the emergency, still I should not sketch 
him as he stood and looked at such a time ; for it 
would give you only one phase of his nature, and the 
phase, too, least seen and needed. It would not be 
fair to him ; for it would not adequately describe him. 
I should tell you rather of his ordinary appearance 
when unruffled ; of his manner of speech and action 
day by day. I should take you into his domestic life, 
and show you how patient and courteous he was ; 
into his public life, and describe his integrity and zeal ; 



136 OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 

into the centre of his friendships, and make you see 
him in his loves : in short, I should picture him to 
you as I knew him to be in the ordinary expression 
of his nature, and not as he might appear in the sud- 
den and rare emergencies of his career, and so make 
you understand and love him. And so I would act 
also in my efforts to make people understand God. 
If I can only make them understand and realize what 
my heavenly Father is in himself naturally, I shall 
feel that my duty has been done, and the strongest 
possible pressure put upon them as rational beings to 
love and serve him. 

" The lines are fallen unto us in pleasant places." 
No, not fallen : our Father's hand has drawn them so. 
Love carried the cord, and drove the stakes, which 
allotted to us our fortunes, and made us, even in the 
supply of our physical comforts, like happy kine, 
which lie down, filled and restful, amid the clover- 
heads and the rich odors of the growing grasses, in 
the fat meadow-land. But more generous yet has 
been the divine allotment to us in respect to our 
minds and souls ; for he has invited us to his own 
table, and, seated with his Son, we have fed like 
children of God. Oh the love this Being should 
have from us ! Our gratitude should go up before 
him ceaselessly, as the flame of some strange incense- 
fire, that generates from the air around it, in burn- 
ing, the force that feeds its constant fervor. 

And now, as those who are sensible of God's 
benefits ; who hold their wealth and love and friend- 
ships, and all dear things, as given of him ; as those 



CHRISTIAN GROWTH. 137 

who adore him for the loveliness of his nature, and 
the benevolence of his wa}^s, — we bow our hearts 
in reverence ; and, as the simple yet perfect expres- 
sion of our praise, we say, " Our Father who art in 
heaven, hallowed be thy name." 



SABBATH MOBNING, NOV. 26, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.-KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 

"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." — 

Eplies. iii. 19. 

THE apostle is striving to impress the Church at 
Ephesus with the universal application of the 
atonement as manifested in the salvation of the Gen- 
tiles. He beseeches God to enlarge their faith and 
charity, and to give them, as the crowning act of favor, 
the grace to know and understand the wonderful love 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. My subject, as suggested 
by the passage, is, " Knowledge of Christ." I have a 
strong desire that some in this audience may see Christ 
to-day as they have never seen him ; that they may 
learn to know him in all his gracious offices in their 
behalf, in all his tenderness of sympathy, in all the 
height and depth of his amazing love. 

But, friends, a shadow comes over the landscape of 
my hope, even as I begin to speak. I fear that some 
of you here do not even remotely know Christ. If I 
speak my heart out to you, you will not understand 
me. You will think I am only preaching, only making 

138 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 139 

a sermon, if I should speak of feelings you never felt, 
of hopes you never had, of a lore you never learned. 
You are in a Christian church without any Christian 
experience. I am to talk of a Saviour to people that 
are not saved. Am I unfortunate in my audience, or 
you unfortunate in your condition? You are not 
Christians ; and, in saying this, had you only eyes to 
see, you would behold at what a disadvantage j'ou 
stand. You are not Christians; which means that 
you live as those who lived before the star shone in 
the east. You are nineteen hundred years in the 
rear of the world's present position. 

But, Christian friends, not only do some not know 
Christ in their experiences, in their personal motives 
and aims, in their longing and hope, not only are 
many all around us Christiess in their individual ex- 
periences and position, but, strange to say, men there 
are who profess to be religious teachers, prophets, 
and interpreters of Christianity, who know nothing of 
Christ in their religion. I do not mean to be under- 
stood as saying that they have never heard of Christ; 
for his fame has gone out through all the earth, and 
entered into every ear. They do, indeed, have 
knowledge of him. They know him as the student 
knows Plato and Socrates, as the military cadet knows 
Caesar and Napoleon, as the humane reformer knows 
Howard and Wilberforce. They know him as a good 
and gracious man ; as a wise teacher of ethics ; as 
a foe of formalism and hypocrisy ; as one who loved 
truth more than life, and ennobled death, and made 
bis name immortal by dying for it. But, friends, what 



140 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 

meagre, what cold, what heartless knowledge is this 
of the Son of God ! Is Calvary to mean no more 
to my soul than the prison in which envy poisoned 
Socrates ? Is the cross on which the Saviour expired 
to be to the sinful of the world no more than the 
stake of common martyrdom ? Is the name of Jesus 
to have no deeper significance to human ears than 
that attached to one of a thousand names treasured 
by human speech ? Is Christ to be regarded no more 
than one of a dozen remarkable teachers of a remote 
age ? Why, what is a Christless Christianity worth ? 
What salvation is this without any Saviour in it ? 
What is this limp, this unblazoned rag, with no 
name, no letter of light, on all its surface, no golden 
fringe of glorious tradition, no stout staff of historic 
evidence from which to wave ? Do men think that 
New England, that the youth of this generation, will 
turn from the banner of their fathers, will cast away 
the glorious symbol of their glory and power, and 
choose so tame, so spiritless, so cold an affair as free 
religion, or any religion which has not the warmth 
of a human and the power of the divine nature 
beating in it? I tell them, Nay. I am surprised 
that any should feel the least movement of alarm at 
such exhibitions of ignorance of the power of faith 
and the unquenchable longings of the human soul. 
Such a religion has no vitality in it. Such preachers 
have no gospel to preach, no Bible to expound, no 
sin to convict, no faith to declare ; for, apart from 
Christ as a Saviour, there is no gospel, no New Testa- 
ment, no pulpit, no church. When the Church is 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 141 

only a lecture-hall, the pulpit only a lyceum-platform, 
the New Testament only a book of queer assertions 
and blunders, Jesus only a man, what basis have you 
for any powerful religious movement ? None at all. 
Such a religion is like a ship whose parts are glued 
together. The moment you launch it, the instant 
she touches the waters of popular hopes and long- 
ings, the cement of speculation and theory melts, 
and the stately fabric dissolves. What looked so 
grand and philosophic in Horticultural Hall goes to 
pieces in North Street. What dreary work it must 
be to preach, and yet have no gospel to preach ! — to 
have the crowds thronging to you, the halt, the 
blind, the leprous, all crying, " Who will open my 
eyes ? " " Who will heal this withered limb ? " " Who 
can cure me of this loathsome disease ? " and yet 
know of no physician to whom to direct them ! A 
teacher of Christianity not know Christ ! a pul- 
pit ignoring the New Testament ! a person claiming 
to be inspired to preach, who makes a sermon one 
long laugh at inspiration ! Truly, friends, of all 
novelties I have seen in an age which seeks to revive 
the ancient juggleries, this is the strangest. Poor, 
pitiful substitute indeed is this for the faith, the 
hope, the joy, the growth in holiness, which the gos- 
pel gives. He who can tell this age of no better 
heaven than man's mind can conceive, and man's vir- 
tue claim, has no place among the religious forces of 
the day. 

No : I take no alarm, I borrow no trouble, from such 
an effort. There is not religious force enough in a 



142 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 

Christless religion to propel it twenty years. There 
is no converting power in such a religion. It is un- 
real, shadowy. It does not take hold of the popular 
heart. It puts no grasp of power upon men's con- 
sciences. Its fingers, I admit, may be delicately shaped, 
and beautifully tinted : but they are fingers of wax, 
and not of flesh and blood ; there are no muscles in 
them. The good abhor such a religion as impious ; 
and the wicked know, that, if they ever should make 
an effort to be good, it must be from some higher, 
holier, mightier motive than it yields. I do not ask 
you if you know Christ as I would inquire whether 
you are cognizant of some delightful piece of knowl- 
edge. Faith in a Saviour, a Helper, a Friend, is 
not a mere matter of preference : it is a matter of 
necessity. The conditions of your daily lives are 
such, your exposure to calamity is such, your tempta- 
tions are such, your sins are such, that you need the 
presence of Him who " taketh away the sins of the 
world." Your wants are real, deeply felt: you need 
a real and deeply-felt supply. Your griefs are real. 
Your lives are not like gardens in the tropics, where 
the blossom and the fragrance fail not; where the 
birds are all gayly feathered, and their flight like 
the flash of gold through the air : your lives are like 
gardens at the north, where winters succeed sum- 
mers in swift succession ; upon which the frost falls, 
and withers every thing pleasant ; into which the bit- 
ing wind comes, aDcl searches out every leaf of beau- 
ty, every trace of fragrance, to blow them all away ; 
and your garden is left unto you desolate. The 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 143 

walks are frozen, the borders withered, the trellises 
leafless, and stand like skeletons which once were 
clothed upon with life and loveliness. How often 
have such seasons come to you ! The world did not 
know it ; no one knew it but God and your own 
soul : but more than once since you were born have you 
stood empty-handed and alone on the earth ; when 
you faced adversity, as a woman thinly clad, homeless 
and friendless, faces, with features from which all the 
warm blood has been driven, the cold winds of the 
north ; when you stood in your houses, which were 
like to nothing so much as a cag^e in which the favor- 
ite bird lies dead ; for death had come to the chamber, 
sudden and swift, and the voice that was sweeter 
than the voice of birds was hushed forever, and your 
heart was like to one around whom all the blackness 
and horror of darkness were gathered ; or when hell 
concentrated all its pressures upon your soul, deter- 
mined to have it, and your virtue tottered and swayed 
as a building heaved upon by an earthquake, and 
every hope was shaken in its place, and honesty and 
honor and fidelity were upon the point of coming down 
in one huge wreck. Such seasons, I say, have come 
to you, and you have called for help as a man who 
is being murdered at ni^ht shouts for a watchman : 
and God heard your cry, and answered your prayers ; 
and out of the darkness a voice sounded, " Let there 
be light," and light was ; and to the earthquake he 
said, " Move no more," and the earth became steady 
beneath you, and your virtue, your honesty, your 
honor, your fidelity, stood. Then and there, my 



144 KNOWLEDGE OF CHEIST. 

brother, you knew Christ ; knew him as Peter knew 
him when he was lifted from the waves ; as the 
penitent thief knew him on the cross ; as Lazarus 
knew him when the voice of his Lord and Friend 
startled him from the slumber of death, and, clothed 
only in the garments of the grave, he came forth 
from his sepulchre. 

You see therefore, friends, that to know Christ 
with the head, to know him only as a man who 
once existed, but who died and passed away as all 
mere men must, is not to know him as Paul prayed 
that the Ephesians might know him. You must know 
him in your experiences of joy and grief, in your 
trials and heartaches, in the disappointment of your 
expectation, the failure of your plans, the wreck of 
your hopes, in sickness and sorrow and death, if you 
are to know him as he deserves to be known, as he 
longs to be known. 

The path which leads one to a knowledge of 
Christ is the same as leads one to the knowledge of 
any friend. 

What is it to know a man? Is it to know his 
name, where he lives, what his business is ? Do 
you know a man when you know only this ? Why, 
no, you say : that is not to know a man. To know 
a man, you must know what his character is ; what 
motives, whether honest or dishonest, actuate him. 
I remember being invited to see a portrait once. It 
was curiously arranged. There was a glass over it, 
whose reflecting power had been partially taken 
away. It was a whim of the painter to have it so 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 145 

exhibited. When you entered the room, and took 
position before it, you saw nothing but a dull-look- 
ing mirror, in the centre of which the eye could 
barely discern the outlines of a human face ; or 
rather, so dim was it, it seemed only a suggestion 
of a face. But, as you gazed, you became gradu- 
ally conscious that a change was taking place. The 
outlines grew stronger, more clearly marked ; the 
mouth, nose, and eyes became dimly visible. A 
moment more, and a face was indeed to be seen, but 
lacking color and expression. The features did not 
speak. There was no intelligence in the eye. But 
in an instant a soft tint began to spread over it ; the 
cold cheek warmed into the color of perfect cleanli- 
ness and health ; the eye was lighted up ; the soft 
golden hair seemed alive with the stirrings of wind ; 
the lips stood apart, as if in the act of sweet utter- 
ance ; and then you knew that a face of wonderful 
perfection as a work of art was before you. 

Well, so it is with our knowledge of men. We 
do not see them at a glance ; they do not reflect 
what they really are at once : we do not know them 
at first ; we see only the outlines of the man. Only 
as we watch him in his motives and acts, only as 
time permits his real character to become visible, 
his soul in all its movements, in every feature of its 
life, every shade of its color, to beam out upon us, 
do we know a man. Xo one knows who his friends 
are until it costs something to be his friend. When 
you have to stand up and defend a man in the face 
of many ; when you have to back him up against 



146 KNOWLEDGE OF CHETST. 

odds ; when you have to set your faith in his integ- 
rity over against other men's suspicions ; when you 
have to say to falsehood in the majority, " You are 
a liar!" — then, and not till then, does the man 
really know you as his friend. 

I knew a man two years ago who lost his prop- 
erty. He was burnt clean out, as we say. He had 
been a good man. He was not a saint ; he was not 
one of your " perfection Christians ; " he was simply 
a good man with faults : but he was burnt out, I say, 
and stood, at fifty, with not five hundred dollars in 
the world. His neighbors and friends put their 
heads together; and they not only put their heads 
together, they put their hearts and pockets together. 

They said, " Neighbor A has been unfortunate : 

let us help him out. He has been a good citizen ; he 
has helped to build up the place : let us take hold 
and give him a lift, and start him again." They did. 
They appointed a committee (you never knew a 
dozen New-England men get together who didn't 
appoint a committee). They took up a collection: 
one man put down fifty dollars, another one hundred, 
one five hundred, one ten dollars, — each according 
to his ability ; and they raised enough to start him in 
business again. Then they sent two of their number 
up to his house with the money. They found him 
in his library, casting up accounts. They knew, and 
he knew, that, when he was done, he would find that 
he was not worth a dollar in the world. Not one of 
those men could speak a word. They laid the 
bundle of bank-bills down on his desk, and went 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 147 

away without saying a syllable. And the man said 
to a friend the next morning, while his voice choked, 
and great tears welled up into his eyes, " Sir, I never 
knew that I had such friends on the earth. I am 
not worthy of such love." 

And it is just so with Christ, my people. You 
who know him only by name ; who know him only 
as a being who once lived on the earth, but is now gone 
from it ; you who know him only in the outline of 
his features, and not in the glorious radiance of his 
countenance when lifted in light upon you ; you 
who do not know him in your motives, in your 
trials, in all the sweet and bitter experiences of your 
souls, — you do not know Christ. Friends, you are 
living in a Christian age and land without knowing 
your Saviour. The knowledge into which angels de- 
sire to look, and are not able, solicits your attention, 
and you scarcely give it a thought ! With the mes- 
sage of salvation in your ears, with the evidences of 
redeeming love in personal testimony before your 
eyes, you are of those, who, having ears hear not, and 
having eyes see not, the things that concern their sal- 
vation. I marvel that natures which respond so 
sensitively to the impulse of gratitude and duty in 
the comparatively low things of this life give no re- 
sponse to those solicitations through which God seeks 
to influence your immortal destiny. 

Have you ever, in some quiet hour, some leisure 
moment, with no duty on your hands, with nothing 
to intrude on your pleasant musing, found yourself 
running over the list of your friends, from the dear 



118 KNOWLEDGE OP CH3IST. 

mother that gave you life, clean down to the last ac- 
quaintance you made, analyzing their characters, 
and singling out the predominating characteristic of 
each ? I have, often. Of one man I have said, " He 
is the most honorable, high-toned man I ever met." 
Of another, the man with the most lively sense of jus- 
tice, " He would not knowingly wrong a living being : 
if he were to die, and I were to symbolize his character 
and life on marble, I would etch on his tombstone 
nothing but a pair of balances in exact, equal poise ; 
for that would tell the gazer what sort of a man he 
was." Of another I would find generosity the domi- 
nant trait ; of another, benevolence. And so I have 
gone on making a schedule, as it were, of their virtues. 
Now, you may take any of these, and you say with 
me, that no one could really know them until they 
discovered the ruling impulse, the regnant disposition 
which held the sceptre, and ruled all the outgoings of 
their lives. You must find the key to the cabinet be- 
fore you can look upon the jewels within. Until you 
have this perception of the central impulse of a per- 
son's life, you do not know the person. And so it is 
precisely touching our knowledge of Christ. You 
must put yourself at the right point to behold a pic- 
ture or a landscape ; and you must put yourself in the 
right position toward the Saviour or ever you can know 
the Saviour. Now, a great many Christians, I fear, do 
not know Christ as they might know him, because they 
do not look at him from the right point of view. They 
do not realize what the great purpose of his life toward 
them is. They do not know how strong he is, be- 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 149 

cause they never lean on him ; nor how sympathetic, 
for they never teil him their troubles ; nor how for- 
giving, for they never heartily trust his mercy. Now, 
if I could only know what conception you have of 
Christ, if I only knew how your imagination pictures 
him, what sort of a being in his feelings toward you 
you deem him to be, I should be able to say 
whether or no you knew him as you ought to know 
him, as he long? to be known by every human heart. 
Take this matter of going to him in prayer. I fear a 
great many Christians go to God as to one offended 
at them ; as one averse to them ; as one from whom 
forgiveness, if it comes at all, is extorted by much 
entreaty ; as one whose sympathies are to be aroused 
by cries and tears, the spectacle of agony and prostra- 
tion. But, friends, the Bible does not present God in 
any such light as that. Take the parable of the prodi- 
gal son, — a parable spoken expressly to enlighten us 
as to God's feelings toward us, — and what do we see ? 
Is this miserable beggar who has beggared himself ; 
this wretch and wreck of humanity, who has more 
sins at his back than days of life ; who has done what 
not one man in a thousand does; who has sounded the 
depths of Eastern vice, and dragged himself through 
the whole slough of it ; whose sins have been open, 

distent, outrageous, — is this enormity of ingrati- 
tude, this marvel of sinfulness, to be received when he 
drags the poor remnant of his manhood back to his 

home ? If there was ever a being from whom God 
might in anger avert his face ; if ever he might delay 
the outgoing of his mercy ; if ever hesitate in his 



150 KNOWLEDGE OF CHEJST. 

mind, in doubt where the line between justice and 
mercy might be drawn, — surely it was in the case of 
this ruined vagabond. The prodigal felt this himself. 
He felt that there was no hope for him, no chance 
of restoration. His expectation, his dream, was, not 
that his father would ever receive him back to his 
love : his ambition was, to be only one among his ser- 
vants, — a poor unnoticed, unloved hireling. But, 
friends, you know the story. Do you believe it? Do 
you believe that God does leave his house ? does 
run to meet him ? does actually put his arms around 
the poor sinner's neck? Do the tears of a divine 
compassion, the tears of a great and holy joy, fall on 
the face of a poor wretch before he has even had time 
to say a word? When you have sinned, when your 
conscience condemns you, when you know and feel 
that you have sinned against Heaven and in his sight, 
and, falling on your knees, you go to God in prayer, 
do you begin to pray as if you had a great task of 
persuasion to perform ? as if you must make a picture 
of wretchedness of yourself to waken God's pity? 
as if he had a memory only for your offences, and pity 
had set his heart against you, and you must propitiate 
him, and by much entreaty prevail upon him to restore 
you to your former rank and standing in his favor? 
Is that your view of God ? Is that the picture your 
imagination paints ? Well, it is not mine. May the 
Spirit of God be praised forever by my lips, that he 
has made me able to see God in another light, — even 
as Jesus himself saw him when he described- him to us 
in the parable of the prodigal son ! Ah, friends ! I 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 151 

fear you never will know of the love of God in Christ 
Jesus, because you will not believe. You continue to 
make God like to yourselves ; to think that he can for- 
give only as you forgive, or love only as you love. 
His love is so great, that it is incredible to you. You 
feel that there must be a mistake about it. You fear 
of making forgiveness too easy. You cannot believe 
that God loves like that. But, friends, he does love 
like that; for the Gospels say that he does. He loves 
every one of you like that, whether you believe it or 
not. He loves every poor, sinful man like that. Do 
not think this love too great: no less love could 
have given birth to the atonement. It was because 
God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begot- 
ten Son, that those who believed in him might not 
perish, but have everlasting life. 

And now, friends, I say, if there is a man here who 
wishes to be taken into God's favor to-day ; who is 
tired of his sins ; whose judgment says, as he looks at 
his past course of life, " This thing must stop ; I will 
eat no longer with swine ; I will arise, and go to my 
Father's house," — I tell you, my friends, the God of 
mercy has gone out to meet that soul ; and, if his arms 
were ever around any man's neck, they are around that 
man's neck at this moment. I believe in original sin ; 
I believe in depravity : but, beyond all these things, I 
believe in God's love for man. Perish all other arti- 
cles ; yet, keeping this, my creed shall be abundant. 
This faith, full-orbed, resplendent, with healing on its 
beams, shall ride the heaven of my hope. No night 
shall darken while it sails above me, no clouds en- 



152 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 

dure the fervency of its career. It shall roll on, the 
cause and centre of radiations that penetrate through 
the entire atmosphere of my existence. My life shall 
be its orbit. It shall revolve forever around the soul 
that it illuminates, and shine the brightest when 
about to pass with me from this into another realm. 

friends ! if our faith in God's love for us in Jesus 
was like to what some men's faith is in the doctrine 
of election or depravity or inability, the divine na- 
ture would be to us what the mother's bosom is to 
the babe, — the source of all our nourishment, the 
warm pillow of our peaceful sleep. 

I do not think of Jesus as I used to think of him. 
My views of him have changed, nay, are changing, 
with the changes of growth. Once, touching his 
divine nature, he was a mystery. The union of the 
divine with the human, the infinite with the finite, 
quickened thought indeed, started speculation, winged 
the imagination, until it flew so far that it became 
bewildered, and was lost amid the mazes and circles 
of its own flight ; and, unable to support itself in the 
thin atmosphere to which it mounted, it fell at last 
tumbling to the earth, no better for its effort. Even 
as a man I did not understand him : he was as one 
not to be understood. I admired him, but did not love 
him. I could not bring him down to my level. 

1 was a peasant, he a king. Look at him as I might, 
he was nry God, and not my brother. He was not one 
half so much my friend as many of you are to-day, — 
one who would watch over me if I were sick, counsel 
with me when I am perplexed, and support me in all 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 153 

the ups and downs of life. And, when I read that I 
was heir and joint-heir with him of heavenly glory, 
the words did not take hold of me : I do not think 
that I believed them. But, my friends, all this is 
changed ; at least, it is changing. I am not perfect in 
faith yet, but more trustful than I once was. I know 
that I am not perfect in love yet ; but, nevertheless, 
fear has been cast out of me. I have not attained as 
yet, I have not reached, the city ; but I feel that my 
feet are in the road, and that I am moving on to a full, 
clear, sweet knowledge of God's love in Christ. The 
city is hidden yet ; but ahead of me, and on the other 
side of the hill that I am climbing, on the crest of 
which my grave lies (I do not like to hear people talk of 
going down to their graves : Christians do not go dozen, 
they go up, to their graves), — on the other side of the 
hill I am climbing, on the crest of which my grave lies, 
I say, I hear the bells of the cit} r ringing : for heaven 
its triumphs continually ; its victories never cease, 
and its bells are never silent. And the bells keep on 
ringing : their melody, swelling in clearness and vol- 
ume as I advance, sounds forever in my ears. They ring 
in sympathy. Vv 7 hen I weep, they swing more slowly ; 
not like our funeral-bells, but as if God had hushed 
them to a softer tone. When I laugh, the}' ring a 
livelier movement. It seems as if my own brother's 
d governed the chimes. And so he does, good 
ads, — even Christ the Lord, who seems no longer 
King, as Lord, as Master, but as my own dear, 
elder brother. 



154 KNOWLEDGE OF CHBIST. 

My friends, I have preached this sermon to you 
because I believed that it expressed the prevailing 
spirit of New-England theology as it is being 
preached in her churches to-day. The old warfares 
are past: the noise of their contentions is hushed. 
The bitter speech, the logic that ignored charity, the 
spirit that begat persecution, the mistaken zeal that 
banished the Baptist and scourged the Quaker, denun- 
ciation and anathema, — these no longer find expres- 
sion from her pulpits. The fighters sleep, and the bit- 
terness that entered into those contests between breth- 
ren is covered by the grass that grows on graves. 
Nevermore may such battle be joined! Let the 
grave, I say, have its triumph. Christianity will not 
be the loser. Peace will never be born out of con- 
tention. The creed of the evangelical churches is 
better than the practice of evangelical Christians. 
Our heads are nearer the truth than our hearts ; we 
are better theologians than we are disciples. What, 
then, is the great need of the hour ? Is it more 
knowledge ? No. " Who by searching can find out 
God ? " Do we need in our churches more forms, more 
definitions, more creeds ? No, again. The harp has 
its full allotment of strings. It is perfect ; and yet 
we wait in vain for the music. It is dumb : what 
it needs is the living player, — a white hand to sweep 
it, and fingers of skill to move over the strings. So it 
is with us. Our knowledge is ample. We appre- 
hend fully the way of salvation. What we need is 
the Spirit of God in our hearts ; the divine touch 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHEIST 155 

that shall thrill us, and wake every faculty to melodi- 
ous action. We need a stronger, deeper, warmer 
love for man as a lost sinner, — a love which shall 
disquiet us by day, haunt us by night, and give us no 
rest until we have saved some one. 

Oh that such a love might come to us in perfect 
measure to-day ; and not alone to us, but also unto all 
the churches ; yea, and unto all mankind ! 

And now, my people, how are we to best commu- 
nicate this sympathetic, love-fostering heart-knowl- 
edge of Christ to the world ? How can we interpret 
the Saviour, not intellectually, but emotionally, to 
men? They do not understand this matter of reli- 
gion in its spiritual and spiritualizing characteristics. 
They associate it — perhaps we have taught them to 
do so — with certain forms of words, with deductions 
of men's intellect, and of men, too, who lived centu- 
ries back, with a certain machinery of administration 
distasteful to them, and a mannerism of expression, 
which, it must be admitted, is not always above the 
censure of a just criticism : and the result is, they look 
upon religion as something to accept or reject just as 
they'please ; whereas the religion of the New Testa- 
ment can no more be rejected by a person who under- 
stands its spiritual adaptations than a loaf of sweet 
bread can be rejected by a man pressed with hunger. 
It is adapted to him. It exactly meets his wants. 
It is just what he needs. And so it is with religion, 
friends. There is not a man or woman of all you whc 



156 KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 

are here — I care not how grave or gay, how rich or 
poor, you may be — that does not need those motives 
and impulses, those hopes and incitements, that are 
found only in the practice of the Christian religion. 

How to make men understand and feel this is the 
great question for the Church to solve. This is the 
problem that stands at the foot of every pulpit, looking 
steadily and wistfully up into the preacher's face. It 
stands at every pew-door, with its hand on the clasp, 
saying, " Let me in ! " It stands knocking at the door 
of every Christian heart, saying, " Open, that the 
world may see what a palace of hope there is 
within ! " 

For one, I am growing to feel, that, if we would 
make men trust Christ, we must trust him more our- 
selves. Our love, our hope, our joy, our faith, must 
be more perceptible to men or ever they will search 
for the cause. And who ever began to search for the 
cause of Christian hopefulness, and did not finally 
embrace it ? Hence it is, that in my walk and con- 
versation as a private man, and in my utterances as a 
public teacher, I strive to make the healthy and 
happy and vigorous in religion seen. I wish that the 
despondent and tempted and fallen of my age* may 
see how buoyant and hopeful and blessed Chris- 
tianity is. The beacon is not for me alone ; it shines 
for every soul that sails the sea I sail, — for every 
tossed and buffeted one, and for all who are heaved 
upon violently : and never are its beams so bright, 
never are they shot forth so far, as when the sky is 



KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. 157 

overcast, and the shore whitest with peril. When the 
heavens are black, the sea white, and the shore one 
voice of thunder, then it is that religion stands like 
some granite shaft that is built on an immovable 
rock, and whose crest is luminous with a steady and 
an inextinguishable light ; then it is that the Saviour 
becomes a Saviour indeed, and we know that love 
which passeth knowledge. 



SABBATH MORNING, DEC. 8, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT. — DIVINE GOVERNMENT.' 
"Thy throne is established of old." — Ps. xciii. 2. 

A THRONE is the symbol of government: it is 
the expression of authority, and the seat of 
power. When the Psalmist declares of God that " his 
throne is established of old," it is the same as if he 
had said, that God, from all time, is the head of a 
government ; has power, dominion, and sovereignty. 
I am to speak to-day of this subject, — the subject of 
divine government ; of its necessity, use, and modes 
of manifestation. 

The w r orld is very willing to forget that God is a 
Governor ; that he has a throne, exercises authority, 
and executes laws. There is much said, even in cer- 
tain pulpits, calculated to confuse the public mind 
touching the character of this government. God is 
misrepresented, and made to appear harsh and unlove- 
ly, and his authority, when exercised, as the exhibi- 
tion of malevolent affection ; and not a little capital 
is made, by those who oppose evangelical religion, by 
this process. 

158 



DIVINE GOVEKNMEXT. 159 

But observe how palpable is the error in such 
views of divine government. Why, what is the 
greatest as it is the dearest-bought boon of our race ? 
What is that to obtain which people most willingly 
lavish their treasure, and shed their blood ? What is 
that most precious result of the world's best growth, 
whose presence includes all other blessings, whose 
absence is the synonym e of every disorder and curse ? 
Is it not good government ? Is it not for this that all 
the people of the world who are sufficiently enlight- 
ened to appreciate what is desirable are to-day striv- 
ing ? For this one result the race for these centuries 
have been struggling. For this the statesman plans, 
the publicist writes, the poet sings, and the patriot 
dies. Ask those -three hundred thousand graves 
which dot our land ; lower your lips to the mounds 
beneath which the nation's heroes slain in battle sleep, 
and ask the sacred dust beneath the cause and reason 
of their death ; and out of the silence of those graves, 
and from the lips of the dumb, will come this answer: 
" We died that liberty might not perish, or good gov- 
ernment be lost to this continent." What does gov- 
ernment mean ? It means stability ; it means prog- 
ress in every good order of growth ; it means 
material prosperity ; it means peace. Like that mar- 
vellous tree of the tropics, its leaves clothe, its fruit 
feeds, and under its shadows the nations of the 
earth repose. If you call for further evidence, I point 
to your schoolhouses and churches, — blessings un- 
known to anarchy. Enumerate the number and mag- 
nificence of your cities, your fields that feed the 



160 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

world, and your ships that whiten the sea with 3^our 
sails. What has advertised America throughout the 
globe ? What has sent your fame to every tribe of 
the desert, and lifted your name before the eyes 
of the world as a white banner, on whose snowy folds 
the anchor and the dove are wrought, — symbols of 
hope and peace, — but the reputation of your govern- 
ment ? Here is liberty for which centuries have 
sighed. Here property and life are respected ; here 
conscience is free, and education to be had for the 
asking. This, friends, is what you owe to govern- 
ment ; and, owing this, when the government was im- 
perilled it became to us all a duty and a joy to give 
and die that the majestic structure over our heads 
might not fall, involving us in common ruin. 

But, my friends, if such is the value of good gov- 
ernment to the earth (and that I have not exagger- 
ated it you can judge), what must be the value of it 
to heaven ? If its presence and protection is needed 
to inspire and protect the inhabitants of our little 
globe, who can express the need of its presence and 
protection among the vast populations which people 
the universe of God ? And, if its absence is disas- 
trous here, what dire confusion and irretrievable 
disorder would result from its absence there ! Nay, 
more : if personal suffering and death are not to be 
weighed in the balance over against the public good as 
expressed by human necessities, what suffering to man 
should interfere with the preservation of law and 
order throughout the domains of that vast republic 
of which God is president and head ? My hearers, 



DIVINE GOVEKNMENT. 161 

fix in your minds to-day, and let the thought lie em- 
bedded in your memories forever, that the pillars 
which uphold the structure of universal security 
must never be shaken. No trifling with the founda- 
tion upon which the hope of the universe rests! 
Races before the eye of God, as armies before the 
eyes of men, may be swept away; over the grave 
of many an order and rank heaven may gaze : but 
above all these considerations remain forever and un- 
changeable the purpose and necessity of God, — gov- 
ernment. All else may topple and fall ; but this shaft 
of central authority must remain. The stars may 
fade, and fail in their courses ; but the sun itself must 
abide forever at fullest orb, forever performing, as it 
revolves in its circuit, its ministrations to all. 

Now, I submit to your candor to say whether there 
can be any correct theology or theological argument 
from which this matter of divine government is 
excluded, or in which it is allowed little prominence. 
Can there be any adequate discussion of any prin- 
ciple or practice touching rights before the law, 
unless the existence of law, and its supreme right to 
maintain itself, is first cordially acknowledged ? All 
of you say at once, " Certainly not." Without gov- 
ernment, there would be no rights or privileges to 
discuss. From it, as branches out of the trunk, all 
these proceed. Its existence is the source and guar- 
anty of every thing valuable. Indeed, might we 
not say, and say truly, that theology is but an inves- 
tigation into that government, and the ways and 
methods in which its principles are expressed in 



162 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

daily and practical administration? He who even 
prays or sings to God, without conceiving of and ad- 
dressing him as the head of a government, prays 
and sings to no purpose. The very essence of a 
petition is, that it is the cry of a lower to a higher, — 
the ruled to the ruler; and the harmonies that 
swell in circles of song around the footstool are 
significant, because sounded in praise of Him who is 
" King of kings, and Lord of lords." 

But will that one in this audience to-day, who is 
most interested in this presentation of truth because 
he has seldom if ever heard it preached, tell me if 
there can be any government without law ; and how 
law can be law, and not pronounce penalties ; and 
how penalty can ever be expressed through any 
other medium than punishment? As that penalty, 
no matter what, pronounced by the law, is uninflicted, 
the law itself is disregarded and dishonored ; and' 
by so much as its existence and enforcement were 
helpful of government, by so much is that govern- 
ment weakened and endangered. No reasoning can 
be safer or surer than this ; no conclusion, no matter 
to what it may lead, more indisputable, and beyond 
question. 

Now, let us take one step farther, and inquire, 
What is the first aim and instinct of government 
when attacked? Get the idea well in mind. When 
a government finds itself in the presence of enmity 
and revolt ; when the ground begins to heave and 
tremble under its feet, and all its honor, all its glory, 
all the good it signifies for man, yea, and its very 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 163 

existence itself, are in jeopardy, — what, I say, is the 
first thought, the first instinct, of that government ? 
Why, pause a moment, and reflect. I am speaking 
to an American audience, and in a city where patriot- 
ism is hereditary : I am speaking in a State whose 
high honor it is to have shed the first blood to estab- 
lish and the first blood to perpetuate the government 
of our country. You remember the spring of 1861, 
the fall of Sumter, the 19th of April, and the blood 
which Massachusetts poured out as a libation to 
liberty upon the stones at Baltimore, when the noble 
Sixth marched through that city toward the capital, 
— you recall, I say, the excitement, the alarm, the 
anxiety, of those days, when men feared that liberty 
was passing away, and the government which had 
fostered us so long and- well was about to perish from 
the face of the earth. Well, what was the first 
thought of the government and the loyal people in 
that hour of peril ? What was the one instinctive 
cry that leaped to every lip ? It was this : " Pre- 
serve the government ! " " Without a government 
we are nothing," said all. "Right or wrong touch- 
ing this matter of slavery, the government must 
id." " What is money without a government ? " 
exclaimed Wall Street ; and, opening her coffers, she 
to the government, " Take and use : only defend 
yourself.'' " What is knowledge without a coun- 
try ?" echoed the student ; and, dashing his " Horace " 
to the floor, he shouldered a musket. "What arc 
lands and home and children without liberty? " cried 
the farmer ; and, leaving the plough to rust in the 



. 164 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

• 

furrow, he started for the capital. In an hour the 
American people awoke from their trance of indiffer- 
ence, and saw, as a man sees a mountain illuminated 
by lightning at midnight, the relation of government 
to liberty, wealth, and whatever is most precious to 
the race ; and the first instinct of government, which, 
as with the individual, is self-preservation, found 
expression in the loyalty of the hour. 

Through this illustration which our own recent 
history so aptly furnishes I am able to answer the 
question, " What is the first aim of government as 
against rebellion ? " It is to perpetuate itself. Let 
a government be attacked, let alienations between 
sections spring up, let hostile combinations be formed, 
and its first instinct, its first thought, is not mercy, 
is not forgiveness, toward. those in revolt, but defence 
and perpetuation of itself. The sword, and not the 
branch, is the symbol through which that government 
gives expression to its own subjects and before the 
world of its nature and determination : and the 
purer that government, the wider its influence for 
good, the greater and more needed the protection to 
the good it extends, the stronger is its determination 
to strike ; the more like a statue of inspired granite 
does it become over against such as would assault it 
to its overthrow. 

Allow me to inquire if this principle, this law of 
preservation, does not extend to all kinds of govern- 
ment, divine as well as human, and as endangered 
by all manner of rebellion, spiritual as truly as physi- 
cal ; and, if so, who shall put a limit to that de- 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 165 

fence against devils and wicked men which the gov- 
ernment of God shall feel itself called upon to wage 
for its security and continued existence ? 

But, friends, is there not one other consideration 
which a government, w r hen attacked, must never 
ignore ? The first, as we have said, is self-preserva- 
tion : the second is vindication. It must not merely 
continue ; it must continue with honor : it must 
stand an object of admiration to its friends, and of 
fear to its foes. 

The latter dntj is, indeed, co-existent with the for- 
mer ; for, in order to be permanent, a government 
must be honored. The true basis of authority is not 
physical-force. The police regulations of your city, 
by which life and property are protected, do not 
maintain and uphold law : there is, lying back and 
underneath all these, a public sentiment, a public 
opinion, without which your municipal courts would 
be in vain. This respect, on the part of its subjects, 
a government must be strong and honored enough to 
command. It must be able to defend and vindicate 
itself from all insult and hostile intrusion. Thus, 
constituted, and thus alone, does it have in it the 
elements of endurance. Generations pass ; but it 
abides. Centuries serve only to render it more sta- 
ble. The fathers fall on sleep ; but the children 
continue to reverence and love what they founded. 
But if a government lack this power to command 
the respect of its subjects, this ability to vindicate its 
honor when insulted, who can predict stability to 
it ? What is more pitiable than a weak, nerve! 



166 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

cowardly government, irresolute in its purpose, halt- 
ing in its performance, supplicatory in its posture ? 
While patriots blush in very shame, the insolent de- 
ride and defy it. We have had such a nerveless, 
cowardly, and weak government in our day, in this 
country ; and the last three months of President 
Buchanan's administration were as corrupt and 
shameful as men ever blushed for. No wonder that 
Europe, in view of what it saw at Washington 
in the winter of 1860, proclaimed that the Great Re- 
public was breaking up. Europe had seen those 
symptoms of dissolution before, and knew what 
they meant. They were right : the republic was 
breaking up : half the stones in the majestic struc- 
ture were sliding from their places. For three 
months we had no government. There was no pilot 
at the helm. There was a mob, and a cowardly, 
brutal mob at that ; and that was all the government 
we had, until Massachusetts, girded for war, with the 
old battle-light in her face, had gone through Balti- 
more, leaving on the stones of its streets the marks 
of her footprints in blood. 

Continue the illustration previously used. Suppose 
our government had not vindicated itself, had not 
summoned armies into the field, and appealed to the 
sharp cruelty of the sword to assert its right, where 
should we have been to-day ? Where would have 
been the government, where liberty, where the hope 
of the world ? These ivould not have been. A crisis 
had been reached. The temple was opposed to a 
pressure it might not resist. The old mortar of the 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 167 

Revolution must be remoistened with fresh blood, and 
the arches of constitutional liberty reset, and more 
stoutly braced.' The necessity was accepted, — ac- 
cepted, too, in the interest, not of revenge, not of 
hardness of heart, not of crueltj 7 , but in the interest 
of justice, of liberty, and the greatest good of the 
greatest number. And to-day, owing to this vindi- 
cation of itself, which necessarily implied punishment 
to many, and suffering to all, the republic stands like 
a pillar of fire before those nations of the earth 
which are journeying by circuitous routes from op- 
pression toward some happier state and fortune. 
The government has vindicated itself, and is as an 
asylum whose doors are never shut to the distressed 
of the world. 

But, my friends, if such is the supreme right and 
duty of a government to perpetuate and vindicate 
itself, if such is the necessity of government on 
earth, what words can express the necessity of a 
divine government in the universe, and the right and 
duty of God, its head, to perpetuate and vindicate it ? 
But how, pray, does a government vindicate itself? 
Does it vindicate itself when it winks at deeds cal- 
culated to overthrow it ? when it connives at plots 
which have for their object its destruction ? when, out 
of weak pity and maudlin sentimentalism, it with- 
holds deserved punishment from those who take from 
forgiveness a larger license to sin? Is that the way 
for a government, human or divine, to defend itself? 
No orator dare claim it before an audience unconfused 
by irrelevant considerations. Deeper than reason, 



168 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

deeper than education, in the human heart, is the 
instinct and acknowledgment of justice. In every 
generous, order-loving man is a principle which 
prompts him to admire any exhibition of strength put 
forth in defence of rights and institutions essential and 
salutary to man. Hence it is that all attempts to emas- 
culate a people's idea of God have ever failed : whether 
his name has been Jupiter or Thor or Jehovah, it has 
ever been the symbol of power, of majesty, of om- 
nipotent might. Whether, as with the prophet, the 
human mind was taught to conceive of him as one 
" who inhabit eth eternity," whose " throne is from 
generation to generation, and endureth forever," or, 
as pictured in classic song, at the head of a feast, 
surrounded by drunken gods and goddesses, — how- 
ever seen, through whatever debasing medium, he 
invariably appeared as a ruler and a king. It has 
been left for some visionists of our day to paint him 
with the bolt dropped from his nerveless hand, the 
august majesty of his bearing gone, and all the terror 
of his might departed. Heaven, to them, is not a 
country peopled with well-ordered, and therefore 
happy masses, bat a land inhabited by an amiable 
mob ; and God himself, instead of being the head 
of a government, the executive of divine legislation, 
a weak collection of harmless and fatherly impulses ; 
a mild, benevolent being, too gentle to oppose, and 
too weak to attempt to punish, the wicked. To this 
somewhat fashionable idea of God the idea of a 
divine government is opposed; for government means 
law, and law means penalty and punishment to 



DIVIDE GOVERNMENT. 169 

all who disobey. And if heaven is the seat of a 
government, a government which in its moral appli- 
cation rules over us all, then it is not the home of 
amiable chaos, an harmonious Babel, a mild and be- 
nevolent anarchy. 

If there were any need to show the necessity of a 
strong government at the head of universal affairs, it 
might be found in this thought, that the subjects of 
this government are divided into two widely-different 
classes of beings, — the good and the evil, the obedient 
and the rebellious. The whole universe, if I might 
so express it, is exposed on all sides to the intrusion of 
the powers of evil, formidable in numbers, and bitterly 
hostile in spirit ; and nothing save the government of 
God stands between them and the consummation of 
their evil intentions. This is our shield and buckler, 
this our strong tower of defence, our present help in 
time of trouble. This it is that speaks, and the tides 
of evil know their bounds. Hell, which had rolled its 
billows up as if to ingulf us, hears the voice of 
omnipotent command, and melts with sudden lapse 
to fiery foam. If, my friends, I seek to elevate the 
idea of a divine government, and to make you all 
familiar with it, it is not only because I deem it 
true, nor because it is needed to harmonize the Scrip- 
tures, but also because I draw, as a follower^ of God, 
it consolation from it. Behind this thought, my 
hope, when availed, retreats, as birds, when a tornado 
Q the mountains, swoop to the shelter of a granite 
je. When the violence of evil fills the land, and 
high places of the earth rock and sway ; when 



170 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

wrong triumphs over right, and the mean and the 
wicked and the base gain ascendency ; when injus- 
tice is expressed in statute, and license to sin legis- 
lated and hawked about for sale ; when the Gospels 
are perverted by educated folly, and the Church 
sleeps, while vices, like serpents, coil and nestle in 
her bosom, — my hope of liberty for my country and 
my race finds its refuge and lodging-place in the 
assurance that " God reigns." Is it not true, that, 
more than once during the dark days of the war, this 
thought it was which upheld us ? And he of blessed 
memory — Lincoln the just — turned with all his 
people more than once to the Lord of hosts for 
strength. 

I have now discussed the value of government, 
and your minds followed on to the conclusion, that 
beyond all else was it needed, and beyond all else it 
must be preserved, in the universe. We next in- 
quired into the aim, the very first instinct, of gov- 
ernment when attacked; and we found it to be this, 
— first, to perpetuate itself ; and, growing out of 
this, secondly, to vindicate its right to exist by pun- 
ishing its enemies, and protecting its friends. And, 
finally, we have remarked upon the need of a strong 
central government in the universe, and the consola- 
tion that its existence affords to the good. Now, to 
conclude, what relation does the death of Christ 
hold to the government of God ? It holds this rela- 
tion : It answered the same purpose as the punish- 
ment of the sinner would answer. God miodit now 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 171 

pardon, and the demands of his government to the 
last letter of the law be complied with. The prob- 
lem was, How could God be just, and yet the justifier 
of the unjust ? Now, go down to any judge in your 
city, when a criminal stands before him guilty by his 
own confession, and ask him to forgive that criminal ; 
and he will saj^, in reply, " How can I do this thing 
you ask, and remain upright ? how can I let this 
criminal go unpunished, and remain true to the prin- 
ciples I represent ? " Suppose some judge should 
fall to doing this thing, — not in one case, but in many 
cases ; should, in fact, make it a rule, and go on releas- 
ing, day after claj^, all the criminals brought before 
him : what would be his reputation in your city ? 
Suppose some clergyman should preach, Sunday after 
Sunday, that the judges who punished thieves and 
burglars and assassins were harsh, cruel, and re- 
vengeful men ; that they were not kind and merciful 
and loving, because such qualities of heart were in- 
consistent with their inflicting such terrible penalties 
on their fellow-creatures : what would j-ou say ? Or 
suppose he should proclaim that the duration of the 
punishment was out of all proportion to the crime, 
and that no good and benevolent judge would ever 
consign a man to imprisonment and suffering which 
would last as long as he would last on account of a 
crime which did not take live minutes for him to 
unit : what would you say ? I am not talking 
theology to you ; I am not trying to change your 
views ; I am talking of principles of public justice : 



172 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

and I ask }^ou, as man to man, what you would think 
of a person who should preach such stuff. 

But suppose, again, you should go down to that 
judge about to pronounce sentence upon some crimi- 
nal, and, ascertaining that something might be sub- 
stituted in the place of his punishment equally satis- 
factory to justice, equally honorable to the law, 
equally acceptable to the judge, present the equiv- 
alent — perhaps your own person — to the court in 
behalf of the criminal, and then ask the judge to let 
the man go, and the court should say, " Justice being 
satisfied, the law being equally honored, public safety 
equally secured, I most gladly acquit the prisoner." 
My hearers, this is precisely what Christ did for you 
and me. This is the way that God can be just, and 
yet the justifier of the unjust ; this is the philoso- 
phy of salvation as held by the orthodox churches ; 
this is the relation of the atonement to the divine 
government ; and thus pardon and eternal life can 
come to every soul now before me. My hearers, you 
are not excited ; you are not wrought up either by 
invective or exhortation : you are in a calm, reason- 
able state of mind ; you are capable of correct 
judgment. I would be willing that yon should sit as 
jurors, if I were being tried for my life, in the very 
state that you are in now. Let me, then, ask you, 
Is not this method of salvation considerate and 
reasonable ? Would you have it honor the lawless ? 
Are you not glad that the divine government over 
you is administered according to the highest princi- 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 173 

pies of public justice ? "Whose honor is hurt, whose 
sensitiveness rudely touched, whose intellect im- 
posed upon, by this scheme of salvation ? Xo one's. 
Then let every heart be lifted in gratitude to Him 
who is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours 
only, but for the sins of the whole world. 

We ask you to accept of Christ only so far as you 
need him. We present him to you who are ingulfed 
in moral dangers, only as a rock built up in the 
midst of the waters, and toward which the wave-like 
mercy of God heaves you. If you do not need him, 
then to you, friend, our argument has no point. If 
you stand to-day innocent before the law ; if your 
conscience has nothing to regret or condemn ; if, 
weighed in the scales of God's exact justice, you are 
weighted with the full measure of holiness ; if 3^011 can 
go to your heavenly Father as to one against whom 
you have never sinned, as to one you have always and 
in every thing lovingly obeyed, — then in very truth 
you need no pardon, and the word "forgiveness" 
has no sound of sweetness to your ears. But if you 
have not so lived (now mark my words as the words 
of a friend) ; if back of you are deeds committed and 
Is attempted of which you can say nothing save 
to condemn and regret ; if you have lived otherwise 
than in perfect obedience to God ; if your record is 
not above the reproach of your own judgment and 
conscience, — then I beseech you to put yourself in 
such a position to-day as shall make the throne of 
justice a throne of mercy. Remember that the " tel> 



174 DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 

ror of the law " is born of your criminality before it, 
and is measured by the degree of your guilt. 

My people, more than once have I, in thought, lifted 
myself above the skies, and stood within and beyond 
its all-circling walls of ether. More than once, clos- 
ing my eyes to the things of earth and sense, have 
I stood amid those who talked in music, and were 
clothed in white. More than once, by faith, have I 
visited the wonderful city described to us by him who 
closed the Bible with his inspired vision. I have 
seen the walls fit to encircle Deity ; the gates, through 
the pearly opening of which the Ineffable passes. 
Nor was the river of marvellous quality hidden. I 
have seen it ; I have gazed upon it with lips that 
quivered to touch the tide, which, being touched, ban- 
ishes the sense of thirst forever. And other wonder- 
ful sights were not wanting : harps and crowns and 
sandals of gold, — all were there ; but in the midst of 
all, higher than all, more majestic, to describe which 
the pen refuses, saying, " Give me another and a 
nobler language, or I pause, being unable,*' rises the 
throne of God. From under it the river of life has 
its source. There it is born ; there it begins to flow. 
There is no voice in heaven that does not sound in 
praise before the throne : there is no harp that does 
not join the voice. The angels journey wide and far ; 
but never do they cease to sing : their flight is one 
lono: line of s-ono;. All this have I seen. But there 
is One, who sitteth on the throne, I have not seen : I 
have not even dared to think I saw. His brightness 



DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 175 

veils him. Like the sun, he hides himself behind the 
fervid outgoings of his glory. Of him all sing, — of 
him, the Invisible ; and the words of the endless song 
are these (chant them in your thoughts as j~ou go 
down to your homes) : " Blessing and honor and 
glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever ! " 



SABBATH MORNING, DEC. 10, 1871. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC- HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 

"Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see i the blind receive their 
sight, and the la3ie walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 
hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 

PREACHED TO THEM." — Matt. xi. 4, 5. 

JOHN was in prison ; and a dungeon was a hate- 
ful place to him. All his life long he had been 
accustomed to freedom, — the freedom of the hills 
and valleys and desert-places. Until now he had 
been as untrammelled as the winds which blew along 
the Jordan. He had been a child of nature, and 
humored in every caprice of impulse and movement. 
He went where he pleased, and slept where he pleased. 
His skill furnished him with his daily food. He 
taxed the bee and locust, and compelled them to yield 
him sweet and nutritious tribute. He knew no more 
of cities and dungeons than an American trapper on 
the frontiers when a thousand miles of happiness 
stretch between him and the sorrow and vice of 
crowded towns. Of all the men mentioned in 
the New-Testament history, there was not another 

176 



HUMANITY THE BEST PBOOF OF DIVINITY. 177 

unto whom prison-life would have been so trying, 
or a dungeon so dreadful, as to John. Luke would 
have whiled the tedious hours away in meditation on 
his favorite science ; Peter been upheld by his high, 
dauntless, and impetuous courage ; the " beloved dis- 
ciple " borne with sweet patience his fetters, sus- 
tained by the remembered voice and face and loving 
caress of his Master : but John the Baptist, this un- 
tamed eagle of the Judaean hills, this ardent, imperi- 
ous forerunner of the Messiah, rude and fierce in the 
very overplus of zeal and energy, — how he must 
have felt the pressure of bondage ! how he must 
have fretted and chafed at his imprisonment ! 

It was not because his dungeon was silent and 
lonely that it would oppress him : he had been a 
lonely man all his life, and familiar with solitude; but 
it was the loneliness of nature, which is sweet, and 
the solitude of choice, which is delightful. Never, 
until now, had he known bondage. Xever, until 
now, had the earth and sky, the woods and moun- 
tains and bright sun, been hidden from him. He 
who had, from his infancy, breathed the free air, — 
free himself as it : had been his own master, and gloried 
iu his rude mode of life, and loved it passionately ; 
whose spirit resented even the restraint which accom- 
panies contact with men, and a residence in one fixed 
de, — was now in a Roman prison, and confined to 
a dungeon-cell. 

Nor must the circumstances of his imprisonment be 
forgotten. They were peculiarly calculated to fret 
him. Every tiling conspired to provoke hiui to unea- 

8* 



178 HUMANITY THE BEST PEOOF OF DIVINITY. 

siness. Suddenly, almost fiercely, he had issued from 
the wilderness before the eyes of the startled people. 
Rude and scant in apparel, a wild man of the woods 
almost in dress, with stern aspect, and words of 
sterner command upon his lips, impelled by a terri- 
ble earnestness, he went up and clown and through 
the country-side, calling upon the nation in a voice 
of thunder to " repent." The Scripture, with that 
vivid simplicity and directness of description which 
distinguish it, speaks of him as a " voice." The man 
is forgotten in the message, as the cloud is unnoticed 
in that instant when the awful bolt rives it. The terror 
of one sense interrupts the working of another. The 
ear is so appalled, that the power of the eye is sus- 
pended for the moment ; and the trembling creature 
fears nothing, save that the heavens are coming down 
in ruin upon him. So it was with John. He was 
not a man : he was a "voice," a strange and aWful 
warning sent out of Gocl ; a voice of thunder to shake 
men's consciences, and make the ruddy face of 
healthy sin turn white. How well he fulfilled his 
mission you know. The terrible " voice" smote all 
alike. It was terribly impartial in its severity. 
Against false priest and false ruler it hurled a com- 
mon denunciation. It went home to the consciences 
of men as the voice of righteousness always will. He 
became noted, feared, loved. Followers flocked to 
him. Success accumulated. His prophecy was on 
the very threshold of fulfilment. The Messiah was 
come. Now it was, when every thing was auspicious, 
every thing hopeful, and the grand consummation, as 



HUMANITY THE BEST PKOOF OF DIVINITY. 179 

he supposed, at hand, that Herod struck, and John, 
in the language of the Scripture, " was thrown into 
prison." From the very centre of converging activi- 
ties, from the hurry and bustle of a reformer's career, 
from" the van of a great onsweeping religious move- 
ment, with the ground-swell of all the prophecies 
under and back of it, and to which his life and labors 
were as the gathering crest ready to break into purest 
white, — in one hour was he taken, and consigned to 
a dungeon-cell. 

For a few days he doubtless was resigned. He 
had a hope with him ; and hope is ever the parent 
of patience. His hope was, that Jesus of Nazareth 
would push on the work he had so grandly urged 
forward, and the cause should not suffer. " If he is 
the Messiah," he doubtless reasoned, "he will do 
what I would have done, — only better. He will be 
another ; voice,' only louder than mine, to this peo- 
ple. His anger at their sins will be more fierce than 
mine, his warning-cry more terrible." So he rea- 
soned and mused and waited. Days passed; and 
what days they must have been to him ! — days of 
suspense, of hope, of gathering dread. Weeks multi- 
plied, and with them his fears. A re-action came. 
An awful revulsion of feeling occurred. Suspicion 
and doubt took possession of his soul. Was Jesus 
the Messiah, after all ? Might he not have been de- 
? " If he is the Messiah," he might have said, 
M why does he not proclaim himself? Why docs he 
let me languish in prison here, under a foreign ty- 
rant's power, when, by one word of his omnipotent 



180 HUMANITY THE BEST PKOOF OF DIVINITY. 

might, he could release me ? Why, if he is the long- 
promised King, does he not gather an army, and 
assert his authority? Why does he not denounce 
the nation's sins as I did? Why make himself so 
common with the crowd if he is to be their great 
High Priest ? Why does he supply slander with its 
strength, and compromise himself at banquets and 
feasts, and by companionship with the hated publi- 
cans and scandalous sinners ? " Such must have been 
the agonizing interrogations that John put to him- 
self as he sat brooding in his prison-cell. He could 
not answer the voice of his own anxiety, nor longer 
endure the agony of doubt. At last he got a chance 
to communicate with some of his followers ; and he 
said to them, " Go to Jesus of Nazareth, and put this 
question directly to him. Tell him that you come 
from me. Go and say, 'Art thou he that should come ? 
or do we look for another ? ' " 

Such, friends, were the antecedents of this mes- 
sage, such the position of John. Let us attend a 
moment to the circumstances of its delivery. 

The disciples of John left him, and hurried away 
to find Jesus. What must have been their feelings ! 
and how their master's face, as they saw it last 
through the dungeon-door, must have haunted them ! 
They knew how much the answer meant to him. 
They knew in what a suspense he would wait their 
return. Very likely, they shared in John's doubts, 
felt his suspicions, and visited on Jesus, mentally, his 
censure. Impelled by their own anxiety, and love 
for their master, they hurried along. Men in such a 



HUMANITY THE EEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 181 

frame of mind as they were, and on such an errand, 
could not lag by the way. At last they came to 
where he was, and, approaching him, delivered word 
for word the message of their master : " Art thou he 
that should come ? or do we look for another ? " 

Apparently, Jesus did not answer at once. His 
answer plainly indicates this. He had been engaged 
in ministrations of mercy before they broke in upon 
him. He continued his labor of love ; while John's 
messengers looked on, waiting. We do not know 
how long he delayed his answer, — evidently long 
enough for them to see and get an idea of what he 
was doing : for instead of answering them directly, 
"I am he ; I am the long-promised Messiah; I am 
the one to whom John was as a forerunner and 
herald," he said, " Go and show John again those 
things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive 
their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed, 
and the deaf hear ; the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have the gospel preached to them" 

This, then, was the climax of many evidences ; 
the last, greatest, and surest proof of his Messiah- 
ship : not that he was exercising miraculous power ; 
not that he was by a supernatural and divine author- 
ity commanding sight to blind eyes, and strength to 
paralyzed limbs ; but that the poor had the gospel 
preached to them ; the despised, forsaken, neglected 
outcasts of the country were recognized as fit subjects 
of religious influence and God's love. He knew that 
this, to John, would be the greatest possible proof of 
his Messiahship. And then it was that the truth 



182 HUMANITY THE BEST PBOOF OF DIVINITY. 

which heads this discourse as its topic received its 
first and noblest expression ; and it was no less a 
personage than Jesus himself, your Saviour and 
mine, my Christian brother, the Head of this church 
and of all churches, who declared that humanity is 
the best proof of divinity. 

His disciples, doubtless, returned to John, and told 
him what they had seen and heard, and the answer 
Jesus had sent back to his interrogation. He was 
content. He saw that this was a greater than a 
prophet, — even God himself ; and the violent death 
that soon after came to him found him ready ; and, 
sudden and swift as it was, he died, doubtless, cheered 
and sustained by the knowledge that the cause that 
he loved better than life was in the hands of One 
able to move it on in abounding triumph. 

I ask you, therefore, friends, to observe that the 
object of the Christian religion is to make men 
humane. Humanity is the road along which men 
are to walk up to that high level of perfection which 
lies like a plateau before God. Christianity seeks to 
make men better and better, until they become per- 
fect as their heavenly Father is perfect. Its object 
is to bring all members of the human race together 
in love ; to wipe out all distinctions which now sepa- 
rate, all customs which now divide, all prejudices 
which cause variance between man and man. No 
follower of Christ is truly Christlike until he feels 
toward the whole world as Christ felt and feels. 
Until 3^ou pity as he pities, love as he loves, forgive 
as he forgives, judge as he judges, you are merely 



HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 183 

babes in Christian attainment : you have not come to 
his perfect stature. It is not to make men think 
alike, but feel alike in their love one for another, for 
which the Spirit works. Two brothers may not 
think alike on a thousand subjects ; they differ in 
tastes, views, opinions : but the same fraternal impulse 
is in the bosom of either, and it constitutes a holy 
and an everlasting bond. He who has the most of 
this fraternal feeling in his heart, who feels his 
brotherhood and kinship with the race most warmly, 
who connects himself through his affections and 
efforts with the poor and neglected of the earth 
most directly, — he it is who is most divine. 

And now, friends, let us examine into this matter ; 
let us ascertain whence this humane element comes, 
and by what law of growth, if any, it is developed in 
the heart. 

To start with, man, in the barbaric state, is not hu- 
mane. The impulse of selfishness prompts all his 
acts. He regards only himself. His selfishness is 
gross and vicious : it is the selfishness of the tiger or 
hyena, — watchful to smite, and quick to steal ; a self- 
ishness that is brutal, and knows no contentment 
save when gorged to satiety, and safely ensconced in 
its lair. This is the state of the cannibal, and of all 
those who acknowledge no law but that of animal 
instincts. There was a time when the earth was al- 
most peopled with such. Our own Saxon forefathers 
were of this number. Remember that every people's 
idea of heaven exactly gauges their humane attain- 
ment ; and the Saxon's paradise was a huge banquet, 



184 HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 

where the tables groaned under their load of coarse 
animal food, and the revellers drank their wine 
from the skulls of their enemies. In this state, 
every man is master of himself the same as a mastiff 
is. He knows no wants but those of his appe- 
tites, no law but the indulgence of his passion, no 
joy but the fierce pleasure of his exercised ferocity. 
His home is a hut; his children, servants; his wife, a 
slave. 

The first result that Christianity produces in such 
a rude and fierce being is to develop his emotional 
capacity. Love begins to exert its power in his heart. 
The mother of his children receives a new dignity, 
and ceases to be a mere drudge. Partially, and in in- 
direct ways, he receives her as his companion. Alow 
order of domestic life is born, and his hut becomes a 
sort of home. He acknowledges, to some extent, the 
obligation of parentage ; and he becomes the official 
head of a family. This quickens his pride : he aspires 
to prominence, power, and authority. As his chil- 
dren multiply, the dignity of his position grows ; and 
the tribal relation is established. 

You see how the man is being gradually made gen- 
erous. Envy, jealousy, pride, fear, and other low im- 
pulses, push him on toward nobler emotions and ex- 
periences. He thinks now of many besides himself. 
His position makes him generous. He plans now for 
others. He is still selfish, it is true ; but his selfishness 
is of a nobler sort than it was. It is not now brutal. 
His sovereignty makes him a protector of others ; 
and this educates him into a knowledge of rights. 



HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 185 

Self-interest compels him to be, at least, somewhat 
just, honest, and courteous. The sense of responsi- 
bility and the stimulus of ambition render him grave, 
thoughtful, and kindly. The cannibal has become 
the chief of a tribe. 

Out of this germ, as you all know, friends, as from 
an unpromising seed in a sterile soil, springs national 
life. The tribe grows to be a nation, and the chief 
becomes a king. This is a long step in the right 
direction ; for, in national duty and life, human na 
ture is lifted to a higher terrace of effort and feeling. 
Citizenship brings to the individual the knowledge 
of rights, and, in so doing, introduces him to a new 
and wide realm of duty. It links him in sympathy 
with many whom he has never seen, and will never 
see. It reveals and inculcates the idea of brotherhood. 
He no longer stands apart by himself : he has been 
swept into a circle, and made to join hands with 
others. He is one of a mighty brotherhood : the 
charm of a common name and destiny, like a father's 
»sing, is upon all. Wherever two Americans meet, 
they meet as brothers. 

You see, now, how the national element is useful to 

God. It is one step, and a long one too, toward love 

f<»r man : it is in the interests of that fraternity which 

ids every human being as a full man and brother. 

I ask you to observe how plainly God is manifest- 
ing his desire that all nations should be at peace, and 
live in amity, one with another. Christianity is e\ i- 
dently accomplishing this result. The age in which 
we live is a remarkable one. The hand of the Lord 



186 HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 

is under this generation ; and, in spite of the pressure 
of all its vices, it is being lifted up. The forces of 
many centuries have culminated in this. The light- 
nings of heaven are made to shoot the thoughts of 
men around the globe. The sea has felt the pressure 
of the divine foot, and throbs with messages of love. 
The language of inspired poetry is no longer figura- 
tive ; for, in very truth, " deep answereth unto deep." 
The sympathies of men are no longer pent up ; they 
are no longer local : they are universal. The swarthy 
and the fair, the pure and the stained, the free and 
the bound, are linked in the clasp of a hitherto un- 
acknowledged brotherhood. The old warfares are 
hushed. The hovel and the palace cease to contend. 
Men think and feel and act differently than aforetime. 
The birth of a babe in a manger at Bethlehem, nine- 
teen hundred years back, revolutionized the world. 
The cross is the pivot around which all science, all 
progression, all upward tendencies, circle and swing 
with an ever-expanding circumference. Humanity 
has been quickened. The hand of the Healer has 
been laid on the paralytic, and his veins tingle to the 
rush of a new and richer circulation. Behold our 
liberty ! Witness ideas of government growing daily 
more humane. Consider our charities. Estimate 
the influence of our myriad schools and colleges 
scattered all over the land thick as kernels of wheat 
in the rear of the sower. Hark to the snapping of 
fetters around the globe ! My people, the Spirit of 
God is on the earth, and working mightily in the 
hearts of men, inclining them to peace and good-will. 



HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 187 

In a thousand ways, Gocl is appealing to that higher 
and purer part of man implanted at birth, and yield- 
ing to which he becomes unselfish. " Put yourselves," 
he says, " in all your policies and enactments, on the 
side of humanity, and you shall succeed." The na- 
tion that despises this exhortation of God shall perish. 
You must not think that this humane feeling, this 
beautiful and fragrant flowering-out of Christianity, 
is to be monopolized by any class of men. Ministers 
and missionaries can give no lovelier expression to 
virtue and humane sentiment than a merchant or 
lawyer or carman. A business-man can be mean or 
noble in his business, as he chooses. He can seek 
wealth for the sake of being rich, — for the sake of 
the power, luxury, indulgence of appetite, or license 
to his passions, it will buy ; and some are moved 
by such a low and wicked impulse, shown by the fact 
that they become more selfish, proud, and worldly 
with every passing year. Time ripens them for the 
grave, but not for heaven ; and although they own 
millions here, live in palaces, and are known with 
envy of many, they shall not have even the garment 
of a beggar wherewith to clothe their nakedness when 
they stand before God. There is another class of 
men in whose heart Christian principle is a power. 
They love money only because it enables them to 
minister to others' happiness. This purpose underly- 
in ; a man's life ennobles him. He is ambitious; but 
his ambition is of a large, a divine kind. lie pushes 
himself out through word, example, and gift, as men 
push life-boats out to sea to save the shipwrecked. 



188 HUMANITY THE BEST PROOE OF DIVINITY. 

It is a brave sight, and one which makes the heart 
leap, to see stalwart men fling a boat out through 
the surf, and themselves into it. Amid all their 
straining at the oars, with eyes full, and blinded with 
the spray, the brave fellows think not of themselves, 
but of the forms that are clinging to the rigging, or 
lashed high up on the swajung mast. So the mer- 
chant who is truly Christian feels as he toils at his 
business. He thinks not of the money he will make 
and hoard up, but of the good it will enable him to 
do. Do not say that this is overwrought and poeti- 
cal : if it is, you are very bad men ; you are not 
Christians. The Master cannot own you as his disci- 
ples. You are not his disciples : you are the disciples 
of Mammon. You are not faithful over a few things ; 
and God will never make you ruler over many 
things. 

The mercenary spirit is the one j^ou should shun. 
Remember, you can be a very respectable man, and 
yet a very bad one. It makes a vast difference what 
standard you adopt for measurement. We are apt to 
judge men too much touching their relation to their 
wealth, and not in their relation to society at large,, 
to the poor, to the Church and their fellow-men. I 
fear some of you estimate worth by the property 
standard. That is a vicious measurement. The real 
question of your worth can never be decided until 
one ascertains what you are worth to the poor, to 
the ignorant, to a correct public sentiment, to reli- 
gion, to God. Ships and stocks and houses cannot 
gauge manhood. Many a man makes a financial sue- 



HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OF DIVINITY. 189 

cess, and is, nevertheless, a pitiful failure. Put him 
in the balance over against any principle, any divine 
impulse, and what weight has he ? Little, or none at 
all. He has not even filled the measure of manhood 
of which the ancients conceived. The philosophy of 
Socrates condemns him, and the spirit of chivalry 
would deny him the knightly rank. But go farther, 
as in justice you must ; put him to the test of a true 
analysis ; strip him of his wealth, and what of dig- 
nity and estimation it brings him here, and measure 
him by the manhood of the resurrection, — and how 
insignificant he seems ! Imagine the " new heavens " 
above his head, and the " new earth " beneath his 
feet, and what a spectacle he presents ! How does 
your millionnaire look now ? Who of you is it that 
would stand in his place ? Down upon him from the 
cloudless spaces fall rebukes ; up from the thornless 
verdure rises a protest. He set himself in all the 
acts of his life against the best suggestions of earth 
and heaven, and both smite him with their censure. 
What companionship can such a man keep in the next 
world ? Into what shining circle, opening to receive 
him, can his soul step ? With whom can he mate ? 
Not with the wise, for he is ignorant; nor with the 
brave, for he is not heroic ; not with the gentle, for 
he is harsh ; nor with the good, for he is selfish. He 
has loved no one in the Christian sense ; he has helped 
no one in the Christian way. If humanity is the 
best proof of divinity, then what is there divine in 
him ? 

How small and pitiful some men become in death ! 



190 HUMANITY THE BEST PROOF OP DIVINITY. 

Of course it is well that they die ! It is over the 
graves of such that humanity makes its progress. 
The most merciful arrangement of God is, that men 
cannot live a thousand years as they once did. Un- 
der such a rule of life the wheels of moral advance- 
ment would be blocked. Without death, reform 
itself would die. The temple in which humanity 
shall finally be enshrined as priest and king is built 
from the tombstones of the selfish and unlovely ; and, 
if men could live as long as they did before the Flood, 
the Almighty would have need to inundate the earth 
again in order to wash the pollutions out of it ! Out 
of the graves of our stupidity and harshness the fer- 
tility of the future will be germinated ; and, standing 
on the mounds of our prejudices, our children will be 
lifted one grade higher in -the humane sentiment of 
universal brotherhood. 

My friends, what is the use of living, unless you 
can better some soul, and bring it nearer to God? 
What gain like to this can the days give one ? To cheer 
the despondent ; to lessen the grief of those who 
mourn ; to draw by the irresistible attraction of sym- 
pathy and personal goodness the erring to your side ; 
to impress the fretful with the nobility of patience, 
checking their noisy complaints by the gravity of 
your silence ; to lighten the burden of poverty press- 
ing on so many backs ; to supply the young with a 
worthy ambition, — this is to live. Woe to such as 
die unregretted ; whose departure brings no moisture 
to eyes ! Woe to the rich man whom the poor of his 
neighborhood do not miss at death ; whom the widow 






HUMANITY THE BEST PBOOF OF DIVINITY. 191 

and fatherless do not mourn as a departed friend ; 
whose departure is advertised, not in the obituary of 
the press, but in the sudden absence of little luxuries 
from the bedside of the sick, and needed comforts 
from the homes of the poor • 

My people, I am confident that I am correct in my 
analysis of Christian forces and results. The true 
evidence that you love God is found in your love for 
man. If you do not love your brother whom you 
have seen, how can you love God whom you have not 
seen ? No greater mistake can be made than to sup- 
pose that Christianity is a creed. Intellectual belief, 
however correct and biblical, is not piety. Christi- 
anity is a principle, and not a faith. Faith interprets, 
and helps one to realize the principle, but can never 
supplant it. The desire of Christ is not to get our 
assent to a certain system of truth. He wants as- 
similation of our natures with his. The priest and 
Levite were more correct intellectually than the 
Samaritan ; and yet you know Christ's judgment. 
The Samaritan was right in his heart, and wrong in 
his head ; while the others were right in their heads, 
but wrong in their hearts. The one was humane, 
but not orthodox ; the others were orthodox, but not 
humane : and humanity won the palm from God, as it 
always will. Love, remember, is the fulfilling of the 
law. 

The power and glory of this church are not found 

in its traditional strictness of belief, in its doctrinal 

correctness, or its theological soundness. These may 

st somewhat your influence for good, but do not 



192 HUMANITY THE BEST PBOOF OF DIVINITY. 

constitute it. Your power and glory are found in 
your practical goodness; in time devoted, in money 
given, in talents consecrated, to Christ and man. It is 
more honorable to you to-day, as it was more pleasing 
to God thirty years ago, that you were an antislavery 
church, than that you were a Calvinistic church. The 
fact that you are in sympathetic alliance with the 
temperance movement is more to your credit than that 
you hold stoutly to the doctrine of native depravity. 
Our connection with the North-end Mission is a bet- 
ter proof that we are a church of Christ than our 
doctrinal connection with the Saybrook Platform. It 
is the fruit on the branches, and not the color of the 
bark, which decides the nature and value of the tree ; 
and so it is what this church has done for God and 
man, and not what it intellectually believed, which 
has made your history, since the day you were organ- 
ized, so honorable. It is by their fruits that organi- 
zations, as well as men, are to be known. 

I wish you to note that this mode of judgment will 
be more prevalent in the future than it has been in 
the past. The tendencies of the age all set one way. 
Christ was more than a rabbi, more than a scribe, 
more than a correct and spirited expounder of the 
Bible. His heart, his life, was a better proof of his 
di\ inity than his head. The best evidence of his Mes- 
siahship was that he preached the gospel to the poor. 
The same rule holds true touching all of us who are 
his followers. It is your heart-goodness, friend, that 
connects you as a disciple to j^our Lord. Mistrust all 
other evidence. Build all your hope on this. Do 



HUMANITY THE BEST PEOOF OF DIVINITY. 193 

good. Love the brethren. Forgive your enemies. 
Give freely to the poor. Make your life a moral ne- 
cessity to many. This is the only exhortation I have 
it in my heart to address to you. It covers the whole 
ground. 

Many of you love this church. What for ? It will 
do no hurt for you to analyze and answer that ques- 
tion. You are ambitious. That is right. It is right 
to be ambitious for others' good and God's glory. You 
desire that this church shall abide as the fathers 
founded it. So do I. I believe in its doctrines. I 
believe in its opportunities. I believe that it has a 
great work to do in this city in the years to come. 
But I assure you, one and all, that it will not live, and 
for one I have no desire that it shall live, unless it can 
live to the quickening of public virtue and the salva- 
tion of men. Unless you put it in closest alliance with 
the unfolding and suggestive providences of God in this 
city ; unless you place it in the van of its humanities, 
its culture, its piety ; unless you connect it with the 
moral necessities of Boston, as a supply is connected 
with the want it meets ; unless the poor, destitute, neg- 
lected, and sinful shall recognize it as their almoner, 
their refuge, a fountain of overflowing help and assist- 
e for them, — unless you do this, this church will 
BOt live, and it ought not to live. The Almighty 
does not need ornamental churches here, or famous 
Churches, or churches of noble history and grand con- 
ative traditions, of stately decorum, and sluggish, 
sspectability : he needs churches full of the 
Holy Ghost, and warm with the fire of a divine zeal; 



194 HUMANITY THE BEST PBOOF OF DIVINITY. 

full of holy energies and benevolent activities ; full of 
love and sympathy for the masses, and a wise use of 
every appliance to reach and elevate them. The 
church that does the least is the least worthy to live. 
It has been granted us, friends, to live in an un- 
usual age, such as has not been since the world was. 
Back of us lie six thousand years of human effort, — 
effort often misdirected, and yet never entirely use- 
less ; for, whether it led to victory or defeat, it added 
unto experience, and lifted the level of opportunity 
higher. Toilsomely the race has climbed the slope, 
generation by generation, step by step, until we stand 
at an immense altitude above the fathers ; and yet only 
sixty centuries are back of us, while eternity lies 
ahead. We know what is behind : tears, failure, and 
death are there; and the hollow air refuses to sur- 
render the moaning of those who died moaninq; for 
the light they might never see. We know, I say, what 
is behind ; but we hold our breath in solemn expecta- 
tion of what is to come. We feel that here, and all 
over the world, changes are taking place in the moral 
and political world such as occasionally come over the 
earth and heavens at morning when the wind and sun 
join their forces against night and the fog. The face 
of God is being lifted upon the nations of the earth, 
and the divine wind is pulsing around the globe. A 
gleam of far-off radiance illuminates the darkness ; a 
delicious movement agitates the air; the mist is 
changed to golden fleece ; and, behold, the Sun of right- 
eousness, full-orbed, resplendent with healing on his 
beams, is rising above the fog ! Rise, then, magnificent 



HUMANITY THE BEST PEOOF OF DIVINITY. 195 

symbol and expression of the Son of God ! Rise, with 
thy vast disk aglow with fervor, thou fount of living 
light, and in the blue firmament above us fix thy- 
self, as a king mounts his throne, and takes position 
before all his subjects! Our eyes shall hail thee, 
and our raised hands give thee welcome. The faces 
of all men shall be uplifted, and, lighted by thy down- 
streaming rays, a common likeness shall be perceived, 
as in children born of one father ; and, in that first uni- 
versal act of intelligent devotion, the long-lost broth- 
erhood of man with man, the world over, shall be per- 
ceived and acknowledged, and man, being humane at 
last, shall be divine. 



SABBATH MORNING, DEC. 24, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT. -ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS IN PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 



"Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; 

CLEAVE TO THAT WHICH IS GOOD." — Eom. xii. 9. 



THE word "cleave" is a strong word : it is a ner- 
vous, intense word, full of vigor and grip. Cleav- 
ing is more than adhering : it symbolizes more than a 
negative cohesion : it expresses a state and condition 
of positive and sympathetic conjunction, a connec- 
tion intimate and vital. When a person " cleaves " 
to goodness in the sense the text inculcates, it is with 
the energy of a vital alliance, as flesh cleaves to the 
bones, or as bones to their sockets. His hopes, 
loves, purposes, and desires are all built up on it as 
the body is built up on the skeleton : he is corded 
and thewed to it. It is more than a mere support to 
what is outward and seen in his virtue. The union 
is that close, indissoluble union of like to like. 
Separation, from the very nature of the alliance, is 
impossible. You cannot separate a kind man from 
his kindness, or an honest man from his honesty, any 
more than you can separate him from his intellectual 

196 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 197 

faculties. Moral qualities are not accidents, but 
growths. If a man is wicked, then is his wickedness 
in him as acidity is in the sour apple. Evil does not 
lie outside of him; is not hung upon him, — some- 
thing that he puts on or off at pleasure : it is in him 
as blood is in the artery, and as marrow is in the 
bone. But, friends, the moral character does not al- 
ter the seat of its residence. Goodness, like wicked- 
ness, is in man, and a part of man. A man does not 
put off honesty at pleasure. If he is dishonest, he 
never had any honesty to put off. I do not say that 
there may not be lapses in morals ; for there may be : 
but such lapses are just what lapses in memory and 
judgment are, — just what an eclipse is to the sun. 
The judgment and memory remain, the sun abides 
still in the sky, although they are momentarily ob- 
scured, and fail to perform their natural functions. 

Of course you understand I am not speaking of 
" natural goodness," as some call it, — amiability, af- 
fection, and the like : I am talking of those high 
moral qualities which come to the heart of man by 
the touch and infusion of the Holy Ghost, of those 
elements of holiness which are the marks and char- 
acteristics of the new man in. Christ Jesus, and of 
those acts which spring from the possession of these : 
and I say, that if a professing Christian lies and 
cheats and deceives, if he overreaches in business, 
if he slanders his brother, and carries about with him 
a wicked temper, he warrants the grave fear that he 
lias never been renewed in heart; that his nature 
has never been made over into the similitude of good- 



198 IN PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 

ness, but is yet in the " gall of bitterness and the 
bond of iniquity." , 

Now, this is what I am striving to impress upon 
you, — and I believe it to be in harmony with the 
Scripture, — that those moral qualities — the affections, 
the inclinations, the tendencies — which are the result 
of the Spirit's operation in the heart are inherent 
and permanent. They are not mere accidents of 
one's circumstances and surroundings : they are in 
and of the very soul itself ; and the acts which they 
generate are, to the soul so filled, what the beams are 
to the sun, — the effulgence of itself. Now, no one 
doubts but that the moral excellences of Christ were 
peculiarly and strictly his own. Even in thought you 
cannot separate them from his divine character. You 
cannot conceive him as existing apart from them. 
They were truly and verily of him. They were 
he himself. He embodied them. He incarnated 
them. They were vibrant in his flesh and blood. 
But what, pray, is the result of the Spirit's work in 
the heart ? Into what is the natural man renewed 
when the transforming power of grace has been ex- 
perienced ? Is it not into the very likeness of Christ? 
Does not the same mind that is in Christ dwell in 
those who are Christ's ? Is not their goodness, in its 
residence and character, the same as his goodness ? 
and is not the bond of union which unites them an 
essential union? You pluck a branch from a vine, and 
is it not in its elements one with the vine ? In sap, 
in fibre, in every mark and constituent quality, the 
unity, the identity, is supreme. Well, in the realm 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 199 

of morals, does not the analogy hold good ? You 
take a Christian, — a soul renewed from what it was 
by the power of God; and I care not where you 
find it, of under what conditions : the tempest may 
have beaten it clown, a cruel blow severed it ; it 
may have been blown about by the violence of no 
matter what evil fortune : still, even in a withered 
and dying state, you will invariably find it of Christ, 
and like Christ. The man is not, and may never be, 
a natural man. The kernels may be shrivelled and 
shrunk, the ear blighted and mildewed: still, at a 
glance, you know that it is not a tare ; it is wheat, — 
the outgrowth of the golden seed and precious plant- 
ing of God. 

A good man, therefore, incarnates goodness. Good- 
ness is a part of him as it was of Christ. He can- 
not exist apart from it. The fragrance and the flower 
are one. 

When, therefore, the apostle enjoins us, as Chris- 
tians, to " cleave unto that which is good," it is an 
exhortation to cleave unto our renewed natures ; to 
abide by the principles and the expression of that 
holiness that is of us and in us. It is very similar to 
tin' exhortation to " put off the old man with his 
works, and put on the new man." In all the pur- 
3, t lie hopes and efforts, of our lives, we are to be 
one with our renewed and sanctified natures; we 
are to rotate like a planet in its orbit around the cen- 
tre and source of holy propulsion. 

I have said that the connection of a good man with 
goodness is a vital connection. It is a source of life 



200 IN PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 

to him. He grows on what he evolves, even as an 
instrument of music improves in itself by the emis- 
sion of its own sound. Its harmonies feed it ; and the 
melody it yields to-day insures a sweeter melody to- 
morrow. There is a propagating element in good- 
ness. It is full of parental functions. It is not ster- 
ile, but prolific Its characteristic law is that of 
birth ; and, of all the children born unto it, each is 
better, nobler, holier, than the precedent cause. You 
will catch the truth of this when you remember that 
this is only the counter-truth to that one which ex- 
presses the result of our observation, — that evil grows 
continually worse, wickedness propagates itself into 
an ever-increasing ugliness of expression. A wicked 
man grows more wicked both in the nature and de- 
gree of his crime. Even as a bad man grows worse, 
so does a good man grow better, each impelled by the 
force of the elements in him ; and each lives in sym- 
pathy with the preponderating influence in him. This 
last peculiarity mentioned emphasizes the intimate 
and essential connection of any moral state w r ith the 
person subject to it, and suggests, that preliminary to 
all true personal reformation must occur a change in 
the state or condition of the nature. The vulture 
nature, j^ou see, must be eradicated or ever you can 
expect the evil bird to forget its carnal cravings, 
and change its fierce habits for the peaceful and gen- 
tle demeanor of the dove. 

The evil-doer has, therefore, a sympathetic relation 
to the evil in and around him. The souls of all the 
wicked on earth, of all the lost in hell, are mag- 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 201 

netically connected. Diabolism flows into and 
through them all, each being a perfect conductor to 
all the others. They thrill to the passage of the same 
intense and wicked current. Hence, as we behold, 
they act in concert, with one accord, — a banded 
brotherhood of evil in thought, purpose, and act ; 
missionaries, all, of a gospel of hate and of blood. 
But, as a check to this (for God fights by arraying law 
against law, and principle against principle), — as a 
check to this, I say, we behold as Christians, in and 
around us, a magnetic connection of the good with 
the good. The holy are in a lively and irrepressible 
sympathy with holiness. The good man is good, not 
merely from the determination of a lofty purpose 
and the force of habit, but from an impulse in his 
soul, which, acting with the energy of the solar prin- 
ciple, gives requisite propulsion to all his faculties, 
endowing each with a power to emit a proper and 
beneficent ray. The worst representation, because 
the most unscriptural, is that which presents a man 
born of the Spirit as cleaving to goodness solely, or 
u for the most part, because of a continual exer- 

of his will. It is, indeed, by the exercise of the 
will ; but it is by the exercise of a renewed will, — a 
will previously rectified, and brought into harmony 
with what it is its duty to decide and do. To every 
spiritualized mind is a freedom, a sweep, a joy, in 
all holy exercises. There is to him, now made capa- 
ble of appreciating and interpreting it, a charm, an 
attraction, in virtue, which constitutes a continual and 

uinudly sufficient enticement. He moves along 
9* 



202 IN PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 

the channel of daily duty as a ship which feels be- 
neath it the motion of an ample current moves up a 
river. He is lifted and borne onward by an impulse 
as strong as it is exhilarating ; and the source, the 
fountain-head, of the blessed impulse which impels 
him, is in his own soul. This is my conception, friends, 
of a good man. This is that form of evidence which 
to me seems the surest of all marks that one is born 
of God. How many have within you this witness of 
the Spirit? How many cleave, unto goodness for its 
own sake, and not from any collateral considerations ? 
I have thus far been discussing the subject in rela- 
tion to the nature and the renewed life of the soul. 
Bat goodness relates to what is without, as truly as 
to what is within, man. To cleave to goodness is to 
cleave not merely to the principle, but also to the ex- 
pression of it. Goodness is not a simple, it is a com- 
plex, conception. It can be predicated of the act as 
truly as of the character. Incarnated truth, truth 
clothed in flesh and blood, the truth of the substance, 
the truth of the soul, — this is one kind of truth. But 
truth exists in the abstract. It exists in law and 
formula. It can be found outside of man, outside of 
his nature and character. Man cannot embody it all, 
any more than a flower can embody all the elements 
of sweetness in the atmosphere. Truth is precious as 
expressed in woman's virtue; and history has made 
the names of such as w^ould not live when it was lost 
immortal. The leaf of their honor will never fade ; 
for it is planted by the rivers of water. But, on the 
other hand, there are truths of government, lying out- 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 203 

side of human nature, which are wortlxy of being 
loved more than the life. Liberty is one of these. 
Men there have been and are who held and hold it 
to be worth more than all the world besides. It has 
been like the charmed mirror in the fable, which 
had the power to make whatever it reflected beau- 
tiful ; for men who died gazing at it found even death 
to be lovely, and died as one who falls asleep in the 
arms of a great contentment. 

Xow, one of the beautiful results of gospel influ- 
ence on the heart is, that it makes it to realize how 
good goodness is. It parts the incasements, and the 
beauty and perfume appeal to the senses. I am not 
theorizing now ; I am not parading an orthodox 
notion : I am speaking from my own experience, 
and the experience of hundreds before me. We 
know when the miracle was performed on us. We 
know when our eyes were touched, and we first saw. 
There was a time when we did not realize how good 
goodness is. It was a far-off flower of which we 
had heard, but had never inhaled. But at last God 
brought us to it. We breathed the odor as of an- 
other world. We saw it fresh with dew which had 
distilled upon it from the ether that surrounds God, 
and is to him what common air is to our nostrils, — 
saw it, and put it in our bosoms ; and the proof that it 
is of heaven is seen in this, that it gains in sweetness 
with the years. 

A Christian, then, is one who perceives and feels 
the beauty of moral excellence. He cleaves to it 
with the adhesion of a vital and vitalizing affection. 



204 IN PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 

He grows into it as a germ into a grafted limb. He 
feeds on its food. He lives in its life. The power 
of this connection is incalculable. Its elevating and 
expansive force is beyond estimate. Many of you 
have felt it. You have felt it in business. It has 
enabled j^ou to live wider and higher lives than your 
circumstances engendered. The conditions, the ne- 
cessities, of your lives are material. They tie you 
down: you toil; you delve ; your daily occupation, 
your duties even, are " of the earth, earthy." But in 
your love of goodness, in your connection with it, you 
have found relief and release. It has lifted you ; it 
has refined you. You would have lived grossly : 
this has caused you to live spiritually. You would 
have forgotten the next life ; but this has made you 
to bear it continually in mind, until this spiritual 
forecast is a habit with you, and all your planning 
and thinking are modified by this conception. 

It is, therefore, to professing Christians that the in- 
junction of the text comes with peculiar and expres- 
sive energy. We who realize the beauty of that 
which is good ; we who have felt and do feel its 
power in our souls ; we who were begotten into its 
likeness, and bear its image, — we are exhorted to 
cleave to it. 

Now, if 3 r ou will look within (I mean into your own 
heart, friend), you will see two classes of thoughts in 
your mind, two types of imagination, two kinds of emo- 
tion, two classes of habits. These differ in their na- 
ture, and of course in their expression. Of thoughts, 
some are good, others bad. Of imaginations, some 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 205 

are pure, others impure ; and the latter, using the 
senses as their allies, seek ever to gain the ascend- 
ency. Of habits, some are correct and healthful, 
others evil and injurious. Now, of these two t ypes of 
nature in you, which do you favor? Which class of 
habits, for instance, do you nurse ? Let the interro- 
gation bring down its full weight upon the conscience. 
Meet the question face to face to-day, friend. Draw 
the line, and see on which side you stand. 

Or take your imaginations, and catalogue them. 
Enter that wonderful land, filled with birds which 
beat the air with wings like night, or trace their circles 
with vans as white as snow, and tell us which fly the 
thicker. Is the air above your head dark, or bright ? 
Is it the home of ravens, or of doves ? 

I caution you here not to judge yourselves by 
any conventional standard of morals or purity. I 
am talking too solemnly for you to give a super- 
ficial response. I am talking, not of manners and 
customs and ordinances of man, nor of human society, 
which is artificial in its structure, and often tyran- 
nical in its applications : I am talking to you on 
the level of the soul-life. My spirit, sitting over 
inst your spirits, our eyes fixed on the celestial 
hills, along the shining slopes of which our future 
homes stand, is speaking to you of a life and 
communion not limited by the line of ordinary 
M morals,' 5 but by the line of that final and supreme 
holiness which shall circumscribe us, when, free of 
these hindering and vexatious bodies, we stand co- 
sharers with Christ in those liberties and harmonies 



20fi ix PRINCIPLE AND ACT. 

which come to those whose thoughts are never 
checked, because always pure ; whose utterance is 
free, because it speaks of nothing but innocent feel- 
ings ; whose hopes are all realized, because based on 
holy desires. You understand now of what I am 
speaking ; and I say to you, Be ashamed here of noth- 
ing of which you would not be ashamed there. On 
the level of your powers and wants and desires now 
be as pure as ) 7 ou will be on the level of your powers 
and wants and desires then. Clasp nothing that you 
cannot embrace before God. Love forever ; but love 
only what will make you more heavenly to love in 
heaven. 

It is the chief glory of the Bible that it is a book 
written expressly for erring men. It tells the dis- 
eased man how he can beliealed. It tells the de- 
spairing leper in what river he must go and wash. It 
analyzes the blood, and directs the discouraged pa- 
tient what he must do, and where go, in order to be 
healed. Now, to all you conscious of a double life, — 
conscious of this duplex class of thoughts, emotions, 
imaginations, and habits, — it comes to-day, and in the 
language of the text gives you warning and direction. 
Looking at you as a creature of impulse, of emotion, 
it charges you to cultivate those which are noble. 
Remembering the vast influence which imagination 
wields over the thoughts, and through these upon the 
acts, — so much so, that it might well be called the 
mother of our ambition and our habits, — it enjoins 
with the vehemence of solicitude and warning that 
we cleave, and cleave only, to that which is good. 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 207 

My friends, it is not acts which blacken the soul ; it 
is not conduct which destroys. These are but the 
holes which the worms, bred in the very fibre of the 
wood, have eaten. These are but the fruit and visi- 
ble witness of a disease which holds the entire body 
in its power, making the veins its channels, every 
drop of blood its servant, every pulsation of the heart 
its slave. The thoughts destroy. The imagination 
puts the knife's edge to the jugular vein of virtue, 
and lets the precious current out. You cannot re- 
form a drunkard until you first reform his mind. 
What needs to be done is to have the craving for 
stimulants taken out of him. Over against his inor- 
dinate desire you must raise up some stronger repul- 
sion which shall be more than a match for his appe- 
tite for liquor. This is the true philosophy in every 
branch of morals. You must change the man him- 
self if you would change his habits. There is no life 
so hard as a religious life to a man without religion. 

Now, observe that there is no religion but the 
Christian which proposes to meet this first and great- 
est want of mankind. Examine all other religions 
of the world, examine all the novel philosophies of 
the day, and you can find not even the first trace 
of an attempt to reform man's habits by a prior 
reformation of his nature. There is no doctrine of a 
new birth in all their creed. There is no confession, 
apparently no knowledge, of man's first necessity. 
And yet you all see how fit a doctrine it is, how 
adapted to meet the end proposed. This is why 
they all fail. They say, " Take any tree, — no matter 



208 IN PP.INCIPLE AND ACT. 

how wild, or how bitter in its fruit, — transplant it 
into good soil, put it in a spot where the sunshine 
can reach it, water it abundantly, and the fruit will 
be sweet and perfect." You see their mistake. The 
distinctive characteristics of a tree are not in its 
surroundings, but in its nature. If that is bitter, it 
remains true to its bitterness, no matter where you 
plant it. You must graft in a new vital principle, 
you must charge all its roots with new and sweeter 
juices, before the fruit will be what you desire. But 
such a work requires higher power than man's : it 
requires supernatural power ; and this supernatural 
in religion is what they would fain ignore. They 
want a religion ; but it must be a Godless one. 
They wish spirituality without the Spirit ; they 
wish salvation without the Saviour. You see at a 
glance their error and their misfortune. Advocates 
of reformation, they publish no adequate means of 
reformation. They seek to make men cleave to good- 
ness before they have made them love goodness. 
Their religion is a deification of the human will and 
the human taste. 

But I, and whoever else preaches the glad news in 
Christ Jesus faithfully as it is recorded in the Bible, 
point you to a religion that is of God, and not of man. 
We do not deceive men by telling them that their 
disease is so slight, that they can easily cure them- 
selves. We assure them that they are stricken unto 
death itself, and that no ordinary prescription will 
avail. Our philosophy is not a Godless philosophy. 
Our religion is not one of aesthetic culture. Our creed 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS 209 

is not one which proclaims the adequacy of natural 
forces to redeem man. We know our weakness by 
an analysis, the certainty of which is proved by the 
confession of almost universal experience and the 
unqualified statement of the word of God. We know, 
and we tell you one and all, that virtue is not easy to 
the mass of human beings ; that no one will cleave 
unto what he does not love; and that the first step in 
the reformation of the soul is to rectify the inclina- 
tions and tempers of the soul itself. And we say to 
you to-day, giving voice to the utterance of Him who 
declared the same to his disciples long years ago, 
" Unless ye be bom again, ye cannot see the king- 
dom of heaven." 

Come, then, to the great Physician. Here he 
stands waiting to receive you. Come with your 
weakness and your faults, come with your fractured 
virtue and your broken hopes, come with your 
blinded eyes, come trembling with doubts, come 
even in your despair, and you shall be healed. 
Even as 3-ou experience the love of God manifested 
in the forgiveness of your sins, there shall spring up 
in your souls, touched by the Spirit, a new, a hitherto 
unfelt, a wonderful love for him. You will thence- 
forth cleave to him, not by an effort of will, but in- 
stinctively, as a babe to the neck of its mother. You 
will take hold of him with your soul ; you will em- 
brace him with your affections ; you will glorify 
him in your life. 

My people, we stand within a step of the glad 
Christmas-time. The laurel and the evergreen are 



210 IN PEINCIPLE AND ACT. 

gathered, — the one to symbolize the triumph, and the 
other the everlasting nature, of that goodness, which, 
nineteen centuries back, came with the coming of 
our Lord into the world. Over half the globe it is a 
season dedicated to mirth, and never had laughter 
a better cause to sound ; to gifts of friendship, and 
never until Christ came did man know how noble and 
inclusive friendship might become ; to charity of 
heart and hand, — the one forgiving of the faults, 
the other ministering to the wants, of men. The 
happy Christmas-time — what does it not suggest of 
love, courtesy, and peace ? Even the poor shall for a 
single day have a hint of plenty ; the happy, an hour 
in which they can express their happiness ; and even 
he who sees the hope that long has cheered him dy- 
ing out as dies a fading star, leaving his sky one 
stretch of unlighted gloom, shall, in his dreams at 
least, behold it shining with more than its old bril- 
lianc}^ in that other and superior firmament from 
which no star of all its crowded constellations can 
ever drop. 

O friends ! I hear the music of that ancient time. 
I see the Star and the star-gazers. The sign for which 
the ages wearily waited has come at last, and the hom- 
age of the world begins to move toward Bethlehem. 
Heaven cannot contain itself. Angels surge over its 
boundaries, and, cleaving the intervening space with 
wings that cannot lose their heavenly sheen, sail along 
the hills of the earth. They sing, — -the speech of their 
native skies is music, — and their chorals sound abroad. 
What words are these that drop upon the air like 



ADHERENCE TO GOODNESS. 211 

notes which in their sweetness find undying life, " On 
earth peace" ? Peace !- — the earth had never known 
it since the first sin. Its history had been a sea 
shaken by winds, and tossed. In it millions were in- 
gulfed, and men steered over it only to shipwreck. 
But still the angels sang, and still the song swells on. 
Its waves of melody are spreading everywhere ; and 
when the globe is circled, and every breeze shall waft 
the strains, the earth with a unanimous voice shall 
hail the joyful Christmas-time, and every man, seeing 
a brother in each fellow-man, shall say each to his 
neighbor, " The hour is come at last, — thrice-happy 
hour ! for everywhere, at last, peace is on earth, and 
good-will to men." 



SABBATH MORNING, DEC. SI, 1871. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT. -MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 



" liVEN AS THE SON OF MAN CAME NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO, 
BUT TO MINISTER, AND TO GIVE HIS LIFE A RANSOM FOR MANY." — 

Matt. xx. 28. 

I WISH to speak to you this morning upon the sub- 
ject of ministering to others. I wish to bring out 
and set before you how the lives of men become un- 
selfish both by an unconscious and a conscious be- 
nevolence, and that nobility and spirituality of heart 
and mind are possible to those even whose energies 
are spent in grappling with the material forces of 
the world. 

There are two ways in which men can give their 
lives for men : the one is by the voluntas surren- 
der of themselves to death, and the other by the gen- 
erous and humane influence of their acts. 

The first is the more striking. There is something 
impressive in the idea of one man dying for another. 
It was one of the methods God took to force upon 
men the conviction of his love for them ; and Calvary 
will stand forever as the highest expression of divine 
benevolence. Christ made it the highest test of love 
212 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 213 

when lie said, " Greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." 
Nor is history lacking in instances of this supreme 
proof of love, this supreme self-sacrifice for the good 
of others. Enumerate such as fell in battle, fighting 
for liberty ; summon them from their bloody graves, 
where, unknown and unnoted, they lie ; and what a 
host you have ! Marshal them in companies, in bat- 
talions, in regiments, in divisions, in armies : be- 
hold what masses, what interminable lines, what 
endless columns, what a dense array ! And yet to 
each and every one of all these millions life was 
precious. Each had his joys, his loves, his friend- 
ships, his hopes, his 'dreams : in every case, these 
were surrendered. They counted not their lives dear 
unto themselves : they gave them for the common 
good, — to ransom men from bondage and degrada- 
tion. Or what shall I say of those who died at the 
stake, who languished in dungeons, who endured 
exile and made their graves in foreign lands, who 
suffered the loss of all things for the sake of truth, 
being steadfast even unto death ? Or shall I speak 
of those that watch in sick-chambers, wearing their 
lives out for the diseased, the infirm, the bed-ridden ? 
or of those who serve in hospitals, or flutter like an- 
gels of mercy amid the din and dreadful upr'oar of bat- 
tle, ministering to the wounded and the dying until 
they themselves are smitten ? or even of the police- 
man, who, stricken down by the burglar's billet in 
front of your dwelling, yields up his life for the public 
safety ? Have not all these given their lives for man ? 



214 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

Have they not all imitated, so far as their nature 
and office would allow, the great sacrifice that Christ 
made of himself on Calvary ? How unmindful we 
are of the sacrifices that have been made for us ! 
How little do we think of those great examples of 
faithfulness unto death of which the annals of the 
world are full ! Do we not do well to summon such 
from their graves, to let them all stand forth in the 
light of our generous acknowledgment ? 

But, friends, this is not the only way, or the way 
open to most, in which we can give our lives to oth- 
ers. It is not in dying, but in living, that sacrifice is 
possible : and I wish to unfold this, and make it 
plain to you; I wish to show you a side of your 
lives, and results, which may not have often occurred 
to you. 

Here is a man who started, thirty years back, a poor 
boy. He is now at the head of a large business. He 
sends ships out over all the world ; his agents are in 
every State ; he is rich: men say that, and stop there, 
as if they had summed the results of his life all up. 
But have they? Is that all? He has given the labor 
of his life to trade, to commerce, to manufacture ; and 
he has received — what ? Wealth, you say, — a few 
hundred thousand dollars. And so he has. He has 
received that ; but what has he given to society, to 
the nation, to the world? Benefits unnumbered, I 
reply, — incentives, opportunities, industries. He has 
given work to the idle ; he has quickened skill with 
employment ; he has kept invention active ; he has 
inaugurated improvements in a dozen different direc- 



MINXSTEBING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 215 

tions. He has made it possible for thousands to have 
food and clothes and homes. He has helped to 
build schools and colleges and churches ; sent the 
word of God to heathen lands ; and mingled his life 
in the current of every reform. Am I to think of 
such men, and measure them by what their skill and 
labor and tact have put into their own pockets, and 
forget all the mighty volume of good that they have 
added to the spiritual and benevolent forces of the 
world ? Do you not see and rejoice, friends, at the 
thought that God has made the order of things such, 
that no man can monopolize the results of his life ? 
You might as well try to fence in the fragrance of a 
garden as the influence of such a career. While you 
are thinking only of what you will get by such or 
such a course, while you think only of your income, 
God thinks of what the race will receive by your 
temperance, your honesty, your activity, of all the 
beneficent outgoing of your example. And I say 
unto you all, that you who are upright, industrious, 
patient, honorable, are yielding forth day by day for 
the benefit of mankind more than you receive unto 
yourselves. 

Take the scholar, and watch the outgoings of his 
life. See where they accumulate ; to whom they be- 
long. 

I know that this is extremely favorable to the 
thought I am illustrating ; for the world of mind is, 
by its very nature, less selfish than that of matter. If 
a man coins an hour's manual labor into a dollar, he 
can put it in his pocket ; he can hide it in the earth ; 



216 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

he can keep it to himself: but if a student or orator 
coins his activities into a thought, an idea, a sentence, 
he cannot hide it ; he cannot keep it as his own. 
The cloud might as well clamor to the stream to give 
back the drop that fell into it as I endeavor an hour 
hence to call back to my own brain the impressions 
that it is yielding forth to you. They were mine : 
they are yours. They cost me toil ; but I cannot claim 
them. They were born with mental travail ; are 
truly my offspring : but I can never have proprietor- 
ship even in my own. 

No matter how selfish a thinker may be, nor how 
egotistical or vain, he cannot appropriate himself. 
He is a fountain that cannot hold itself. Take Web- 
ster. He gained honor, office, homage ; these were 
his: but he gave to America, to liberty, to us all, 
more than he gained for himself. Take Sumner, take 
Wilson, take Phillips : how little of their oavii lives 
such men appropriate ! How little can they own 
themselves ! Can Sumner command the brave, the 
heroic sympathies his words and example have awa- 
kened ? Can Wilson enrich himself with what he has 
lavished upon a nation and a race, — the simple pur- 
pose, the instinct of honesty, the wealth of self-im- 
posed poverty ? Can he whose voice, beyond that of 
any other man's, has preached righteousness to this 
nation for thirty years, the smallest portion of whose 
enduring fame will be that he is the most consum- 
mate orator America has yet produced, — can Phil- 
lips take unto himself, can he carry with him out of 
the world, the influence of his words, his example, his 



MINISTEBING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 217 

life ? I tell you nay. These men, and all in any de- 
gree like unto them, do not and can not own them- 
selves. If they have enriched themselves, they have 
enriched mankind more. They have honored us : 
they have honored human nature beyond what we 
can honor them. Their labors, their toils, their strug- 
gles, even their glory, have passed beyond their pos- 
session, beyond their control. The fountain that 
had a locality and a name has become* a stream ; and 
the stream is emptied, and is emptying itself, into that 
vast ocean which swells forever, and shrinks not ; 
whose tides will one day circle the world ; and whose 
waves, crested with airy snow, shall break in music 
on every shore. 

Let us illustrate this with another instance. A 
dozen men make a piano, — one, one part ; another, 
some other. They have worked in different propor- 
tions, and have received proportionate wages, — one, 
five dollars ; one, twenty dollars ; a third, forty dollars ; 
and so on. They worked for pay, and have received 
it, and are content. Men inquire how much they re- 
ceived for their work, and are told. They do not 
think, they do not question, how much those dozen 
mechanics have given to the world. And what have 
they L;iven ? Let us see. The piano is sold : a father 
buys it for his children: it is carted home. Now, 
with that instrument, music has gone into that house. 
A new, a perennial fountain of pleasure, of profit, of 
refinement, of consolation, is opened in the centre of 
that family-circle. When mother is weary, it rests 
her ; when the younger children are turbulent, it 
o 



218 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OP OTHERS. 

quiets them ; when father comes home from his toil, 
worn and exhausted, something more restful than sleep 
comes forth from amidst the keys. It tinkles merrily 
at the wedding-feast ; it assists the sabbath hymn ; 
it rolls forth all its melodies at family re-unions ; it 
cheers, it soothes, it refines, it elevates ; it doubles the 
charm of the household-circle, and increases beyond 
measure the salutary influence of home. You see, 
friends, that even the common day-laborer, who labors 
with his hands only, does not consume, cannot monop- 
olize, the results of his toil. He is generous in spite 
of himself, as it were. He gives to others more than 
he receives himself. 

There is, then, one way to look at life, at your 
daily work, in which it seems dull, prosaic, unspirit- 
ual, earthy. Strive as you may to lift yourself, your 
planning, your toil, your money-making, shall seem 
one mass of selfishness and materialism. And the 
Devil is glad to have you look at it in that way : he 
rejoices when you are so blind that you cannot see 
the threads of gold and amber that God permits us, 
by every good purpose of our hearts, to weave into 
the dull, black woof of earthly effort. And many of 
you, I dare say, have more than once exclaimed men- 
tally, " What is the use of striving to be spiritual- 
minded, as my pastor urges ? I came into business 
when a boy. I put myself in the current of material 
gain then. My whole life has been one prolonged 
effort of selfishness." That is one way, I say, to look 
at life. There may be some truth in it; and I trust 
you will profit by the reflection. 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 219 

But, friend, while some truth lurks in such a feel- 
ing, if your life has been, in the main, honest, there 
is a hu^e lie in such a statement. During all the 
years of your effort, God has caused you to uncon- 
sciously energize along the line of beneficence. You 
have not built a store, erected a house, constructed 
an instrument of music, invented a machine, written 
a book, or done any thing, that has not blessed others 
more than yourself. There is not a single creation of 
your life that has spent all the forces of usefulness 
on yourself. You have been like the clouds that send 
down the rain : you could not number, you could 
not direct, the drops of your influence ; you could not 
gather them together, and brood over them, and say, 
" Behold, these are all mine !" And I hope you will 
all devoutly praise God that you have lived in an age 
and land so far advanced toward the millennium (when 
none shall lack, and all shall share with all), that self- 
ishness, in its old inclusive sense, has been impossible 
to you. 

But let me solicit that you go one step farther than 
this. The extraordinary is only one remove from the 
ordinary in goodness. Add to this unconscious be- 
nevolence a conscious love for man ; a conscious desire 
to give your life for others, not by the way of dying, 
but by the use you make of living. If you need 
an example, you know where to look. I do not refer 
to Calvary : there is where Christ died. You can 
never die as he died: you cannot imitate him in that 
direction. But, friend, if you cannot die as he died, 
can you not live as he lived ? Behold your example 



220 MIXISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

in the service of his life more than at the hour of 
his death. If you cannot ransom any one by dying 
for him, can you not ransom some one by living for 
him ? This hope it is which should hang in the 
heaven of your life, like that vesper star, which, 
amid the gathering shadows and the growing 
darkness, sits luminous and lambent, alone in her 
evening splendor, queen of the western sky. Say to 
this orb of hope, " Shine on me, —shine on me living, 
shine on me dying, — that all my life may be passed in 
thy light, and all my consolation derived from thy 
rays at death ; for, so living or dying, I shall be the 
Lord's." 

I have shown you that you are unconsciously be- 
nevolent ; that j t ou are daily blessing the whole 
world by your activities ; and jou all see it to be true. 
I ask j t ou now to realize it : I ask you to let the 
thought have its full effect upon you. A truth, to be 
potential, must be apprehended. The only way to be 
noble in your industries is to see how noble they are. 
Wiry, friend, the part you gain is a very small part 
of the grand gain of your life : it is only what one 
note is to an anthem ; what one little ray is to that 
vast body of light which to-day illumines the world. 
Do not dwarf yourself when your stature is Godlike. 
How insignificant you will seem to yourself, how in- 
significant you in very fact are, considered in such a 
light ! Why, what does my life mean to me ? what 
types it? Is it the money I earn ? the approbation 
or applause I may at intervals receive ? the little fame 
I may win ? — barely sufficient to keep my name alive 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 221 

a generation after I am gone. Is that all my life 
means ? Do I gain and do no more than this ? I 
trust I shall gain more. I have a hope, but not of 
that kind. I will not degrade myself by the small- 
ness of such an ambition. I hope to be mingled amid 
the unnamed forces of the universe, and thereby 
make the universe my debtor. As an individual, I am 
nothing. My petty gains and name will be forgotten : 
whatever I hoard, I waste ; I shall retain only what 
I scatter abroad. If I can quicken some mind, in that 
quickening my intellect shall prolong its own life. 
If I can ease some burdened heart, my own will gain 
immortal rest. If I can teach the sense of power hu- 
mility, and link imperious strength with gentleness.; 
if I can make hastiness patient, and seal the mur- 
murer's lip with submissive silence ; if I can send one 
single ray of my heaven-born faith into the darkened 
world of doubt, or show the infidel that it is more 
credulous to deny than to believe ; if I can bear the 
inevitable with cheerfulness, and reconcile myself to 
that I may not change, — then I shall be content. My 
name may be forgotten, my grave obliterated, and 
those whom I had blessed unconscious that I ever 
lived ; but I shall still live on among the ranks and 
orders of beneficent force, a needed and everlasting 
power. 

And so, my friend, it is with you. Never limit your 

ition by the material and the temporal. Be not 

ambitious touching what you can keep : be emulous 

only in reference to what )~ou can send abroad. The 

life you find you shall lose : it shall slip from you 



222 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHEKS. 

at death, and you shall grope forever for it, in vain, 
amid the stars. I look about me, and see men like 
eagles walking. There is no stateliness of motion, 
there is no dignity of poise, in all their movements. 
With trailing and dishevelled wings they drag them- 
selves around, soiling the pinions, which, being spread, 
would lift them to the sun. Be not like these. 
There is but one frame for the picture which an eagle 
makes, when with vans widespread, and vibrant with 
buoyancy, disdainful of the earth, with flashing eye 
that looks unflinchingly at the noonday sun, he hangs 
suspended above the clouds, a blaze of dazzling plu- 
mage : it is the wide sweep of heaven, and the all- 
encircling blue. And so there is but one frame vast 
enough to include the human soul when it stands 
erect, self-balanced, majestic, conscious of its every 
power and full destiny : it is eternity. 

This is the life I would have you live ; this is the 
perch from which I would have jou. start for the new 
year's flight, — a flight high-aimed enough to bring 
you nearer heaven, or carry you into it, if God so wills, 
before the year shall close. Who of us here can afford 
to fly a lower flight ? I know the effort it will take ; I 
know the atmospheric pressures Ave must bear up 
against, the buffeting of whirlwinds we shall meet, 
and the opposition of adverse currents we must stem. 
I see the clouds in the shadow of which we stand ; 
I hear the roaring storm through which the soul 
must pass, — the struggle, and the tumult : but how 
slight, how unworthy of regard, these seem ! They 
melt, they fade away, they disappear, as I watch the 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 223 

spirit, with upturned breast, speeding with dauntless 
flight straight for its native heaven, leaving behind far 
in its wake forever the storms and darkness of this 
lower and inconstant world. It shall find cloudless 
skies and a stormless clime amid the everlasting 
hills. 

I ask you, my hearer, to note the influence of such 
elevation of thought, such unselfishness of act, upon 
yourself. Nothing hurts a man more than to seem 
small and ignoble in his own eyes. It is the slavish 
feeling that degrades the slave. A base ambition 
makes the man that cherishes it base. No one can 
debase you but yourself. Slander, satire, falsehood, 
injustice, — these can never rob you of your manhood. 
Men may lie about you, they may denounce you, they 
may cherish suspicions manifold, they may make your 
failings the target of their wit or cruelty : never be 
alarmed ; never swerve an inch from the line your 
judgment and conscience have chalked out for j^ou. 
They cannot by all their efforts take away your 
knowledge of yourself, the purity of your motives, 
the integrity of your character, and the generosity of 
your nature. While these are left, you are, in point 
of fact, unharmed. Nothing outside yourself can 
ever make you smaller than you are to-day. If you 
shall dwindle ; if leanness and inability shall come to 
any faculty ; if you shall lose what makes you an 
ornament to that rank and order of intelligence to 
which you were born, — the loss will be a self-inflict- 
ed one. Self-degradation is the only degradation man 
can know. 



224 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

But, if you will look nobler in your own eyes by 
such a course of action, how much nobler also will 
you stand in the opinion of men ! It is pleasant to 
be esteemed. The admiration and indorsement of 
the worthy appeal to something in man far nobler 
than vanity. I hope you all desire to be well thought 
of by the good. He who cares nothing for the opin- 
ion of others is not one to receive an opinion from. 
But there is a way to live in which you cannot be 
esteemed. You can live so that men will despise 
you and hate you justly. You can make yourself 
the embodiment of maxims and habits so wicked and 
coarse, you can be so sordid and mean and harsh and 
unfair, that men shall have no feeling toward you 
but that of contempt. I ask you to live an opposite 
life to this. I ask you to live so that men shall 
love you. Adopt right maxims and correct habits. 
Be so generous that others shall become generous, 
their natures kindled by the inspiration of your ex- 
ample. Lay up your treasures in the right spot, 
lest you stand poverty-stricken in the day of your 
deepest need. In order to seem great to men, be 
great. 

Interrogate yourself, friend. What sort of a life 
are you living? How do you seem to yourself? 
What is the judgment others would put upon you if 
they knew your heart ? What is the judgment God 
puts upon you ? Has a hand come forth from the 
wall ? Are the characters visible ? If so, what are 
they ? Are 3-011 found wanting ? If you are lack- 
ing in any thing, even by the tithe of a hair, make 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 225 

good the deficiency. Make it good here, to-day, in 
your resolutions ; make it good in every day of the 
coming year in your acts. 

The noblest use of the imagination, the highest 
service it can render a man, is to project him to some 
point down the future from which he can look back 
upon his life as already lived, and estimate the result 
of it. I ask you to do this at this time. Lift your- 
self to some height, and, from the distance of a hun- 
dred years from to-day, look back upon yourself. 
Are you such a man, are you such a woman, as you 
will then wish you had been ? For the conditions 
of your lives you are not responsible ; these were 
shaped by forces outside yourself, and beyond your 
control: but at heart, in the aims, purposes, ambi- 
tions, and hopes of your lives, are you living as an 
immortal being should live ? Are you flying high 
enough to drop into heaven, should death check you in 
mid-career ? 

This is what I, as your pastor, call spirituality. It 
is possible to all, — as possible in the store as the 
pulpit, in the parlor and street as in the study. This 
must be true, or spirituality can, never be realized on 
the earth. You see where the real forces of the world 
lie : they lie at the roots of the world. Where do 
the forces of a tree lie ? Whence come its leaves ? 
whence its blossoms ? whence its fruitfulness ? They 
do not flutter down from above; they are not hung 
in rainbows along the sky; they are not flung over 
it, all threaded and woven, and formed like a mantle 
from out of the clouds : they lie at the roots of the 
10* 



226 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

tree, in the earth, in the mould, in the damp, unlovely 
soil. But out of this deadness and dampness, when 
moved upon by the creative energies, come fragrance 
and loveliness, and such fruiting as is possible to it. 
So it is with men. The forces of their lives do not 
exist in visible beauty at first : they are latent, un- 
perceived ; they are packed in with the muscles ; 
they lie seed-like amid unpublished affections ; they 
are rolled along by the current of their ambitions, like 
diamonds in a turbid stream ; they are a part of their 
forming motives, and unbreathed hopes, and crude, 
half-digested plans. The angelic does not appear at 
once. The old mythologies teach that Minerva 
sprang in an instant, full formed, from the brain 
of Jupiter. That was a beautiful fable. But we are 
talking about facts ; and, as a fact, neither wisdom 
nor spirituality comes to life in that way. They are 
first conceived ; they have a growth ; they come 
slowly to birth ; then they linger in infancy, and 
advance to their maturity — to their full stature and 
splendor of appearance — by degrees, lingeringly. God 
moves over you leisurely, you see. He acts as one 
who is so delighted with his work, that he must ever 
and anon pause in it, and look at it, and enjoy it. He 
gives the plants time to absorb the moisture of one 
shower before he darkens the heavens for another. 
And so I say to you who are in business-life ; who 
are in the rush of gainful pursuits ; whose career, in 
itself considered, is in every sense sordid, — you who 
represent the soil, the mould, the root-forces, of the 
world, — I say that from you shall come up the best 



MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHEKS. 227 

spirituality of the age. Christianity, in the person 
of Christ, was born related to labor. In his youth 
she was apprenticed to a trade. She took one of her 
earliest disciples out of a custom-house ; a physician 
was her best historian ; and all down the ages her 
conflicts and triumphs have been in grappling with 
the material and selfish forces of the world, and over- 
coming them. 

Why, look ahead ! Run your eye down the per- 
spective of future years. As wars have ceased, has 
not trade multiplied? Commerce has, for her father, 
intelligence ; and for her mother, peace. As the one 
grows, and the other becomes permanent, will not 
commerce thrive ? In the rapid material development 
of the earth, I see the best proof that the millennium 
is actually coming toward us. The sun has not yet 
risen ; but the flush on the sky tells from what point 
he is to rise. The old prophecy expressed the idea 
when it foretold a day when " the sword should be 
beaten into a ploughshare." The symbol of death 
and wasting was to become a symbol of life and accu- 
mulation. There is a physical as truly as a spiritual 
regeneration going on by divine appointment. He 
who created the material as well as the spiritual 
forces of the globe will restore both alike to their 
pristine position and pristine harmony, one with the 
other. The desert shall yet bud, and blossom as the 
rose. " Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir- 
tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myr- 
tle-tree." In an improved agriculture, draining our 
marshes, irrigating our deserts, and terracing with 



228 MINISTEKING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

beauty and fruitfulness our now sterile hills, shall 
the old predictions, which have been read so long as 
poetry, be realized at last in fact. 

The truest triumph of Christianity is the triumph 
of the spiritual over the material. If it cannot illu- 
minate darkness ; if it cannot make the dead vital, 
and the gross buoyant ; if it cannot straighten what 
is crooked in man's nature and conduct, and make the 
bitter sweet, — then it will be, and is, a failure ; for to 
accomplish precisely this is its confessed mission. 

My people, the days of life are not on one level 
range : they stand one higher, one lower, than an- 
other. There are depressions and undulations and 
slopes, and peaks and summits from whence you get 
a mighty vision. There are days adapted to our vari- 
ous moods, — days devoted to memory, and days con- 
secrated to hope. There are days when one naturally 
looks backward, and stands with drooping gaze, and 
turns his ear to the solemn music of the past. Other 
days there are that command a large perspective ; 
and man looks ahead with uplifted vision, and hears 
the lively movement of joys to come. We stand at 
this moment within the circle of such a day. It is 
the last sabbath of a year now past. In it what ex- 
periences we have had ! what joys and agonies and 
temptations ! We have been tested as men who take 
the risk of death to escape from death. We have 
been weaker than we thought ; we have been stouter 
than we dreamed. We have borne what we thought 
would kill us ; we have been prostrated by what we 
might have borne. The past is not an undotted plain. 



MINISTETLLNG TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 229 

there are arbors in it, and trellisecl walks, and fra- 
grant borders ; to many, triumphal columns, and here 
and there a grave. Nor is that stretch behind us 
silent: it is full of voices, — voices of pleading and 
of warning ; and their exhortation will never cease 
to sound. 

I sat last week beneath Niagara, when the sun 
lay low in the west, and sent its level rays against 
the face of the fall. I sat upon a mighty bowl- 
der of ice frozen from falling spray, within twenty 
feet of the vast sheet of water which the deep, swift 
rapids send over close to the bank on the American 
side : I sat, I say, within twenty feet of the clown- 
plunging mass, which strikes the bottom with so 
direct, heavy, and continuous a blow, that it shakes 
the shore, and splits the very air asunder, with the 
concussions of its power. The sun called home his 
beams, and disappeared behind the Canadian hills ; 
the brief winter's twilight deepened quickly into 
darkness ; the white mist faded from sight, and the 
plunging masses of water became invisible : but 
still from out the gloom the cataract sent forth its 
solemn thunders, and the darkness shook and undu- 
lated as shock and boom swelled forth upon the 
evening air. And I said to myself, " This is like the 
voice of God, that sounds the same by day or night. 
His warnings fail not, and his solemn exhortations 
never cease." 

My friends, we shall move on, and the past will 
retire from sight. The years will weave their dark- 
ness over the face of its experiences, and much that 



230 MINISTERING TO THE GOOD OF OTHERS. 

now is vivid will grow dim, and be obscured ; but 
the lesson of its experiences, the mysteries in self, 
nature, and God, it has interpreted, the voice of its 
warnings and exhortations, will never be silenced. 
By day and night they will be heard : they will 
swell around us in solemn and majestic cadence, like 
the inrolling surf upon a distant shore. The future 
will interpret the past : what we shall feel will reveal 
God's motive in what we have felt ; what now is 
harsh will be attuned ; and that which to-day is fitful, 
and out of tune, will be brought to the measure of a 
perfect movement ; and all, at last, assorted and com- 
bined, each note distributed upon the proper line, will 
make the finished and divinely-conceived anthem of 
our lives. 



SABBATH MORNING, JAN. 7, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.- NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, AND WHY NEEDED. 
" Without shedding of blood is no remission." — Heb. ix. 22. 

I HAVE been requested many times since last 
spring, both verbally by members of my own 
church and by strangers through correspondence, to 
make a statement of the doctrine of the atonement 
as held by the evangelical churches, and to set forth, 
in plain, direct language, the reason and necessity 
of it as they stand shaped in my own mind. This I 
will now attempt to do. I do it at this time because 
it may chance that I shall not by and by have it in 
my power to la}' the statement before you in such a 
way as shall give y ou an opportunity of reviewing 
leisurely and with care what I might advance. It is 
only when the eye and the ear are both enlisted in 
her service, and steadying her on either side, that the ■ 
human understanding moves along the path of knowl- 
edge with speed and safety. 

It is evident to all, at a glance, that, to a Christian 
or an honest student of the New Testament, there 
can be no subject of inquiry equal in interest to this 

231 



232 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

of the atonement. This doctrine is the centre and 
sun of our religious system. All other doctrines are 
only satellites grouped around it. Whatever gran- 
deur of motion they have, the propulsion comes to 
them from it; whatever radiance illuminates their 
orbs is only a dim reflection caught from its out- 
streaming and inexhaustible glory. From the sum- 
mit of Calvary you overlook the whole field of evan- 
gelical truth, as the traveller sees at one sweep of his 
eye from the summit of a mountain all the circum- 
jacent plains. Whatever a man cannot see when he 
stands with his arm clasped around the cross, looking 
out upon human life and up to God's nature, he will 
never see until he sees "face to face." 

There were two obstacles to man's salvation, Avhich 
made an atonement a necessity. The one arose 
from his relation to the divine government; the 
other, from his inherent spiritual condition. The first 
obstacle was that which the honor of the divine law, 
that had been openly and defiantly transgressed, op- 
posed, — an obstacle that could not be set aside until 
some equivalent for that should be found, which, on 
natural and judicial grounds, would be acceptable to 
it : the second obstacle was the enmity of the human 
heart to God. 

These were the two obstructions which men's sin- 
fulness had heaved up in their path heavenward. 
How could they be removed? These were what 
constituted the awful chasm, along the verge of which 
such of the race as were not too much debauched to 
think were running with sharp interrogations ; with 



AND WHY NEEDED. 233 

tossing of hands, and not seldom quick, piercing cries 
for help. How could the chasm be bridged ? There is 
nothing sadder nor more suggestive than the patient yet 
nervous looking of the world for a Saviour long years 
before he came. They were as those who watch the 
night through, dying just before the dawn. But God 
knoweth his own ; and such as longed for Christ, and 
knew him only in their longings, know him now face 
to face. They lived by the measure of light they 
had ; and now they walk in the light of glory. They 
were faithful over a few things ; and now God has 
lifted them up, and made them rulers over many 
things. 

You see, my friends, that neither of these two ob- 
stacles to man's salvation could or can be removed 
by man. The obstacle opposed by the law could not, 
because no repentance and reformation on the part 
of the criminal could of themselves restore and sus- 
tain the honor of it. The law has a claim which the 
repentance of the transgressor cannot meet. No 
judge accepts the tears and grief of the arraigned 
person as satisfactory before the law. It is not in 
the nature of grief to make legal atonement. The 
principles of public justice refuse to acknowledge such 
moods and states of feeling as equivalent to punish- 
ment. And who is ready to say that what cannot 
sfy a petty police regulation should satisfy divine 
urnment ? Who is ready to say that God is bound 
to r what a city justice cannot for a moment 

think of accepting as an equivalent for the sentence ? 
What weak and shameful conceptions of the Divine 



234 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

Being some men, influenced by their prejudices, have ! 
And what can be weaker or more illogical than to 
insist that God, for the sarke of pardoning a few crimi- 
nals who neither desire pardon, nor would be bet- 
tered by it, must disregard every principle of juris- 
prudence, and conduct his court in such a way, as, 
were it imitated by your city judges, would exorcise 
justice, and the very ones appointed to protect it would 
make law here a by- word of contempt, and place your 
lives and property at the mercy of murderers and 
thieves ? 

I trust that all of you, especially you who are 
thinking about reforming your lives and becoming 
Christians, will see that repentance and reformation 
alone cannot save you. The reason is, (and what is 
plainer ?) because such do not satisfy the law. They 
do not cover your past transgressions ; they do not 
allow the judge to acquit you. Your position, remem- 
ber, before God, is that of a criminal : you are a law- 
breaker. For years you have been notoriously such. 
Transgression has been the habit of your life, — so 
much of a habit, that you do not realize the enormity 
of individual acts. The law has at last seized hold 
of you. You are arrested in your conscience. The 
first question with you, friend, to consider, is, " How 
can I satisfy the law's demand ? " Never mind about 
the feelings of the judge ; no, nor your own feelings : 
your feelings will never save you, whatever they are. 
Ascertain just what is demanded of you by the law, 
and satisfy it. Until you do this, all other efforts, as 
you see, however well meant, however earnestly 
pushed, will be in vain. 



AND WHY NEEDED. 235 

But, my hearers, if repentance and reformation 
cannot sustain and restore the honor of the law, 
how, seeing that these are the utmost you can do, 
can you of yourselves remove the obstacle which the 
law opposes to your salvation ? How can you be ac- 
quitted when the judge assures you that what you 
offer as the equivalent of your punishment is not an 
equivalent ? But by so much as you cannot offer 
what is acceptable yourself, by so much as you can- 
not remove the obstacle, some one must remove it 
for you, or it will remain to your dying day. 

You all agree with me in this. You have gone 
with me step by step as we proceeded, and stand 
essentially in the same position as I occupy; and you 
see how honest and pertinent is this question : If 
you cannot save yourselves, and will not allow 
another to be your savior, how can you be saved ? 
If the law presents a claim against you which you 
cannot satisfy, and you will permit no one to meet 
it for you, what will be the consequences? 

The second obstacle, which, if I may so speak, God 
experienced in his endeavors to save offenders against 
his government from the punishment they deserved, 
was the enmity of the human heart. The race were 
not merely offenders, but they were persistent and 
bitter in their offence. They were so arrogant, so 
set and determined in their hostility, that they 
refused every overture of the government looking 
toward their pardon, and restoration to forfeited 
rights. This obstacle, also, man can never remove ; 
and the reason is, that enmity will never change it- 



236 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

self into allegiance. Enmity does not desire change. 
Filled with it, a man drifts upon the current of his 
hostility, borne whithersoever it tends. Acidity can 
never sweeten itself : it must be mingled with and 
operated upon by other elements, or its bitterness 
remains. If it is susceptible of growth, its growth 
is always in multiplication of itself. It changes only 
to change the degree of its intensity. Granted that 
there exists a single evil tendency in your heart, my 
friend : and the statement, that no check, no better- 
ment, will come to you until you are operated upon 
from without, carries with it the force of a demon- 
stration : for to say that evil will change itself is to 
say that it will destroy the coherence of its own 
constitution acting against itself. If the thorn-bush 
shall ever yield upon the air, and to the hand of 
man, the fragrance and fruitfulness of the peach, it 
will be because it has been grafted upon, and its 
natural qualities overpowered by a new and higher 
order of productiveness. An infusion of sweeter 
sap must vitally change the character of its natural 
circulation or ever it shall reward the nourishing 
hand. 

The obstacle which the death of Christ removed 
was not, as you see, the lack of disposition on the 
part of God to save men, as some seem to suppose. 
Some, even in their prayers, allude to the death of 
Christ as if it wrought some great change in the 
feelings of God toward the race ; as if it pacified 
him, and made him more amiable ; as if it quickened 
his mercy, swept the frowns from his brow, and made 



AND WHY NEEDED. 237 

it natural for him to smile on us. They seem to 
think that God was unwilling to save, determined 
and anxious to punish, until Christ came. They 
talk as if the atonement was necessary in order to 
avert the wrath of God as a personal feeling from 
the race, and thus give occasion for that insolent 
and impious inquiry, "Is God such an implacable 
being, that his own Son had to immolate himself 
before he would be appeased?" What an error is 
this ! What saith the Scripture ? " God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who- 
soever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." If you would see the love of 
the Father, look at Calvary. If there is any thing 
precious in your faith, fellow-Christian, if any thing 
auspicious in your hope, if the Gospels yield any 
consolation, if piety a single comfort, remember that 
you owe it all to your heavenly Father. Christ did 
not bribe him to love you. He loved us as much 
before Christ came as he loves us since. Nay, it was 
his love that gave us Christ. It was his wisdom 
which devised, as it is his power which applies to our 
salvation, the atonement plan. No : the death of the 
Son quickened no previously unfelt pity in the Father's 
bosom ; it wrought no transformation in Jehovah's 
feelings ; it changed no principle of his government ; 
it gave no latent and unexercised sentiment expression. 
He is no better friend, no truer helper, now, than he 
would have been had the Saviour never died. Lack 
of disposition to save on the part of God was not the 
obstacle to be overcome 



238 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

Nor, in the second place, was it the literal claims 
of the penal law which constituted the obstacle. The 
atonement was not a commercial transaction, — so 
much paid, so much due : for, if it were, then would 
it be necessary for us to show that the sufferings of 
Christ were, in the first place, equal in extent to the 
sufferings of those whom he redeemed ; that is, that 
Christ actually suffered as much in his own person as 
the race itself would have suffered had they been left 
to bear individually the punishment themselves. But 
he would be a bold man who should claim ability to 
analyze the suffering of Christ, and balance it against 
its equivalent of human agony, such as might come 
on sinners for punishment of their sins. Again : this 
theory would make it necessary that Jesus should 
endure not only the same aggregate amount of suffer- 
ing as those he redeemed would have borne if not de- 
livered from the law, but also that he should endure 
the same kind of suffering. But this is, in every 
sense, an impossibility ; because no one who is not a 
sinner himself can endure the same kind of suffering 
as the sinner ; and Christ, being sinless, might nei- 
ther experience remorse nor any other painful result 
of sin. Thus you see that it was not the literal claim 
of the law which Christ met. This was not the ob- 
stacle he removed. The atonement was not a com- 
mercial transaction ; and, when Christ is spoken of as 
paying our debts, it is not in the literal sense, as I 
have explained. 

"Well," I hear you say, "if neither of these was 
the obstacle to man's salvation that Christ removed, 



AND WHY NEEDED. 239 

what was the obstacle ? Please put it so that I can 
understand it." 

I will try. You remember the story of Darius and 
Daniel. The illustration is not original with me. 
You will find it in many books, and perhaps have 
heard it from the pulpit before. I use it because it 
is apt. You remember the peculiarity in the Persian 
polity, which made it impossible for any in the king- 
dom to change a decree. Once spoken, it must re- 
main. The Persian government resembled the gov- 
ernment of God in this respect, — its decrees were 
unchangeable. It needs infinite wisdom and infi- 
nite love to inaugurate such a government. Where 
a law cannot be changed or withdrawn, it requires 
omniscience to frame it, else it may prove a curse, and 
recoil on its maker. This was the case in respect to 
Darius and Daniel. Darius, instigated by the ene- 
mies of Daniel, had made a decree which Daniel, as 
his foes knew, was in conscience bound to break. He 
did break it. His transgression was swiftly pub- 
lished to the king, and the transgressor's punishment 
demanded. Now, Darius loved Daniel, and was loath 
to order his death. But there was the decree. It 
had been broken. The king could not set it aside. 
It was unchangeable. He could not fly in the face of 
the most cherished, most reverenced, most insisted on, 
principle of his government. Observe the dilemma, — 
the obstacle to Daniel's pardon. It was not lack of 
desire on the part of the king : every desire of his 
heart was to save him. It was not because he was 
hard-hearted : every sentiment of his bosom was 



240 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

only of mercy. What, then, ivas the obstacle ? It 
was this : It was the want of an honorable medium for 
the expression of mercy, consistent ivith the character of 
the government and the honor of the law. He wanted 
to pardon; but how could he pardon? He " set his 
heart on delivering;" but how could he deliver? 
There was no way in which his mercy might be exer- 
cised without doing violence to the decree. There 
was no medium through which love might find ex- 
pression without disregard of the law. All day, the 
kind-hearted king meditated ; yea, to the going-down 
of the sun, he studied how to deliver Daniel ; but all 
in vain. He could find no equivalent, which, being 
substituted in the place of Daniel's death, would 
meet the demand of the unchangeable law, and yet 
release the condemned. But, my hearers, behold 
now the excellence of God over men. Adore the 
wisdom which is never baffled, never inadequate. 

How accurately, in respect to essentials, does this 
historic incident illustrate the atonement ! Had 
Daniel been guilty, the parallel would have been com- 
plete. The race had transgressed. An unchangeable 
decree had gone forth, that the transgressors should 
die. The whole universe had heard it. Heaven and 
hell both felt that the honor of the law was at stake. 
Still God loved the race ; his heart yearned over 
them in mercy ; he longed to save. But there stood 
the law : it had been transgressed. Inflexible, and 
inflexibly just, it demanded its due. As in the c 
of Darius, the obstacle was not the lack of disposi- 
tion, but of a medium through which mercy might 



AND WHY NEEDED. 241 

be expressed consistent with the demand of the law. 
What was needed was an equivalent before the law to 
the death of the condemned, — a substitution equally 
honorable and satisfactory to it. Darius searched in 
vain. To the going-down of the sun he labored to no 
purpose : he could find no equivalent. But God was 
not to be thwarted in his benevolent intentions. He 
looked into his own fold, and found there a " Lamb " 
of burnt-offering. In Christ, in his life and death, 
the law beheld and acknowledged an equivalent. 
If he would take the place of the condemned, if he 
would bear the penalty in their behalf, the demand 
of the law would be fully met, and the obstacle that 
the decree offered to man's pardon be removed. 

It was removed : an equivalent had been found. 
God might now pardon, and not contradict himself. 
Angels saw the glorious possibility it opened up to 
the race, and congratulated the earth with celestial 
song. They did not and could not foresee that man 
would refuse to be at peace with God. Sympathetic 
with human betterment as they were, they never sus- 
pected, they never dreamed, that any would reject 
the salvation made possible at such a sacrifice. They 
never imagined, friend, that you would refuse a par- 
don which God had been at such effort and cost to 
offer you : if they had, astonishment, grief, and right- 
eous indignation, would have checked their jubilant 
flight, and silenced their happy tongues in mid- 
utterance of their joyful song. 

Observe and fix well in mind what the atonement, 
the death of Christ, did, and what it did not do. It 
11 



242 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

did not pardon any one : it only made it possible for 
God to pardon. It did not remove the second obsta- 
cle to man's salvation (which, you remember, I said 
was the enmity of the human heart) ; for it left the 
human heart unchanged. Men hated God as bit- 
terly after Christ died as they did before. The natu- 
ral heart is as rebellious to-day as it ever was. But 
it did do this : it removed the first obstacle ; viz., 
the opposition which the transgressed law offered to 
man's salvation. It provided a medium through 
which God could express his mercy to us, and not 
disregard his own decrees. It furnished to the law 
an equivalent to the punishment of the criminal, and 
hence made it possible for God to remain " just, and 
yet justify the unjust." So far, it is a success. Wheth- 
er a single soul is saved or not, the atonement is not a 
failure. If any are saved, it is because, by the exer- 
cise of his wisdom, God has taken the obstacles out of 
the way. If any are lost, it is not because the hinder- 
ances remain unremoved, but because they themselves 
refuse to be benefited by the removal. The obstruc- 
tions which your own sins heave up in your path are 
removed, and a free, open way has been for years 
inviting you to traverse it toward heaven. Who 
beside yourselves are to be blamed if you refuse to 
walk therein ? 

Allow me at this point to remark briefly upon the 
relation of the atonement to the pardoning power. 

Some men say, as you know, that Christ having 
died, an atonement having been made, therefore 
God is now compelled to pardon. .Salvation, being 



AND WHY NEEDED. 243 

purchased in Christ, is now something due to the 
race. This and kindred errors spring from a con- 
fused idea of what the death of Christ did and did not 
accomplish, and especially of its relation to the exer- 
cise of the pardoning power. Now, the death of 
Christ accomplished simply this : it answered the ends 
of a good government in such a way that the govern- 
ment was at liberty to pardon offenders in what way, 
and on what terms, it might please. 

I cannot better illustrate this point than by a ref- 
erence to our late national experiences. 

What did the Union armies accomplish ? that is, in 
what position did their achievements put the govern- 
ment ? Why, eminently this : they put the govern- 
ment in a position to pardon without loss of honor. 
Before the rebellion was suppressed, when it stood 
in successful hostility to the government, govern- 
ment was in no position to make overtures. The 
very success of the rebellion was the obstacle in the 
way of the exercise of the pardoning power. To 
extend pardon to such as were in successful and defi- 
ant revolt was but an idle effort, — an exhibition of 
weakness, calculated to call forth derision and multi- 
plied hostility. But when the rebellion was over- 
thrown ; when its armies were scattered, its chief a 
prisoner, its president a fugitive, its weakness con- 
fessed ; when the court to which they had appealed 
had decided against them ; when they yielded them- 
selves up, and took the position of defeated parties, — 
then it was that the government might, with honor 
to itself, extend pardon ; then, without loss of dig- 



244 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

nity, and a fair prospect of doing good, it might make 
merciful overtures. 

But is there any one here who will say, that, because 
the government might do this, it was bound to do it ? 
Is there any one who will claim that the disloyal 
South had any claim upon the government's mercy ? 
Or will any one say that the war for the Union, 
the perpetuation of the government, the vindication 
of national authority, was all in vain, unless all the 
rebels were pardoned, and restored to their former 
rights and privileges ? No : the war was a success 
if not a rebel should be converted to loyalty. If, 
through their persistent hostility, not one had accept- 
ed the merciful overtures of the government, still 
would the war find ample vindication. If every offer 
the nation might make should be rejected, still its 
exhibition of mercy would not be lost. 

Like to this, as I conceive, is the relation of the 
atonement to the government of God, and its atti- 
tude toward a rebellious race. . The death of Christ 
put no necessity on God to forgive. So with the 
national government : how many should be forgiven, 
what ones should be forgiven, what evidence should 
be demanded to show that any were fit sub- 
jects of leniency, were matters over which the rebels 
themselves had no control. Theirs was not the part 
of dictation, — of telling the government what it must 
and must not do, insisting on a right to be forgiven and 
restored. Rights ! — the rebellious have no rights. 
They forfeit before the law all rights and privileges 
when they go into rebellion. Is there a man here, in 



AND WHY NEEDED. 245 

moral rebellion to any law of God, who can demand 
pardon of God as a right ? No. Because a govern- 
ment has by its own efforts removed the obstacle 
which forbade the exercise of the pardoning power, 
and, against every endeavor of those for whom it 
wrought, made it possible to grant pardon, a pretty 
position truly is it to take, that therefore it is bound 
to pardon ! There is, therefore, as you all see, no 
ground for such a theory as some hold. God is no 
more bound to pardon a man now than he would be 
if the Saviour had never died. Salvation is not a debt 
due us, but a " free gift," to which we have not the 
shadow of a claim. The death of Christ simply re- 
moved one of the two obstacles in the way of mercy, 
and so far made it possible for niercy to be exer- 
cised : this, and nothing more. Whether you will 
be forgiven depends upon the state of your feel- 
ings toward the government of God. If God, look- 
ing into your heart, sees that it has repented of its 
rebellion, has thrown down its arms and left the 
ranks of his enemies, and is desirous of renewing its 
loyal relations to him, he will, upon the basis of 
that change in you, doubtless make out a pardon, and 
restore you to the privileges of heavenly citizenship. 
But if he looks, and sees in you nothing but hostility 
and indifference, absence of respect for his person, 
and reverence for his law, and a desire to continue 
in your rebellion, you will go down to your house as 
you came up, an unpardoned rebel before God. Nor 
will the atonement suffer loss because of your loss: 
whether you are saved or not, whether an}' in the 



246 NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 

race be saved or not, the death of Christ, in satisfac- 
tion of divine law, to vindicate divine authority, to 
make salvation possible, to reveal the love of God 
and the wisdom of the Most High, will remain the 
marvel and admiration of the universe. Although 
every Southerner had refused to take the oath of alle- 
giance, yet the war in defence of the government 
would not have been a failure : neither our money 
would have been lavished, nor our blood shed, in vain. 
And so, though not a human soul had accepted the 
provision of the atonement, the atonement would not 
have been a failure. Through it the universe would 
have seen the nature of God as never before revealed. 
Through it the principles of divine government were 
enunciated, and an appeal made to man, — an op- 
portunity given to the race such as might silence all 
whispers and cavil forever. 

The atonement is thus seen to be, not the procuring 
cause of salvation, but the medium through which it 
is secured. The love of Crod is the cause, and the only 
cause, of salvation to any ; and the death of Christ is 
the medium through which he can, in a way honor- 
able to the law, express that love to our redemption. 
There is not a man, there is not a woman, there is not 
a youth, — I care not how widely you have wandered, 
I care not how deeply you have sinned, nor how strong 
has been your rebellion, — in this audience, at this 
moment, to whom God in his love does not come and 
offer forgiveness through the blood of Christ. " Only 
drop your hostility, only forego your rebellion, only 
throw down your arms, only utter a cry, only make a 






AND WHY NEEDED. 247 

sign," he says, " and I will pardon you here and now." 
This is the love of God to you, my hearer. Was 
there ever love like unto it ? Think of your life, — 
3'our life of neglect, your life of indifference, your 
life of opposition, — and then tell me if you have ever 
known in father or mother, in husband or wife, in 
any friend, living or dead, a love to be compared with 
this love. There are faces back of me, over which, 
as they sleep, the evergreens wave to-day. There 
are faces which nightly by the side of couches, and in 
the flush of morning, are lifted to heaven for me in 
prayer ; they express for me all that the human heart 
may feel of solicitude and love : yet in the face of 
Him, who lifteth the light of his countenance upon 
me as I speak, I behold the expression of a love 
deeper, a tenderness more tender, a longing more in- 
tense, than ever heart of flesh may feel, or the voice 
and eye of man or woman express. If all these 
voices should be hushed, all these faces averted, all 
these eyes turned away, the love of God for me would 
remain unchanged and unchangeable. By the minis- 
trations of it while I lived, I should find all needed 
consolation, and at death be folded in the embrace of 
its arms forever. 

As it is to me, so is it to you all. You may reject 
its overtures to-day ; but it will entreat only the more 
at some future time. You may turn your backs upon 
its offer of pardon, and go from this church hardened 
and untouched ; but it will go with you all the same. 
It will follow you to your homes ; it will accompany 



248 NEED OE AN ATONEMENT, 

you to your chambers : it will stand by you at your 
places of business : wherever you are it will be, ever 
repeating, as you reject, its offer, — pardon of all j x our 
sins through the blood of Jesus. Who in this assern- 
bly hears this offer now ? Who is about to decide ? 
What is it you decide ? Do you reject it ? Do you 
accept it ? Who here accepts it ? 

" Without the sheding of blood is no remission." 
Thank God the blood was shed ! Whose blood ? The 
blood of the dying Saviour. It flowed from those 
blessed hands, through which the spikes were driven ; 
from that celestial brow, around which the thorny 
crown, in cruel mockery, was tightly set ; from those 
feet, the sound of whose coming had brought joy to 
the mourner, and life to the dead ; and from that 
saintly side, within which the heart of tender, deep, 
universal love for man was beating. O heart that 
beat for me ! O love that yearned for mine ! O 
hands whose touch in benediction bringeth perfect 
peace ! Saviour of men, we love thee ! The sceptic 
may laugh ; but his laughter can never dim this ever- 
lasting rainbow in our sky. The scoffer may scoff ; 
but we will drown his scoffing in the volume of our 
uplifted praise. Thy name shall be our watchword. 
It shall be our battle-cry. Error shall go down be- 
fore us as we peal it forth. We will write it on the 
front of our stores. It shall be traced in letters of 
light in the rooms where we repose. At waking, our 
eyes shall see it ; and, when we sink to sleep, its rays 
shall guide our spirits to their slumber. In life it 



AND WHY NEEDED. 249 

shall be our star ; and death itself, shone on by its full 
radiance, shall lose the dreadful shadow which the 
unforgiven see upon his countenance, and seem, to us 
whose sins are washed away by the all-cleansing 
blood, like a white angel sent forth from God. 

11* 



SABBATH MORNING, JAN. 14, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT,- NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, AND WHY NEEDED. 
"Without shedding of blood is no kemission."— Heb. ix. 22. 

LAST sabbath, you remember, I discussed the 
obstacle which man's transgression of the law 
opposed to his salvation, and how it was removed by 
the death of Christ. You remember we showed 
that it was not the lack of a disposition on the part 
of God, nor the literal claims of the divine law, which 
constituted the obstacle, but the lack of a medium 
through which God might express his mercy without 
disregarding the claims of the law. As in the case 
of Darius and Daniel, the question was, " What is an 
equivalent, before the law, of the criminal's punish- 
ment ? " The Persian monarch, although he sought 
until the going-down of the sun, could find no equiva- 
lent, which, being substituted in the place of the 
transgressor's punishment, might answer the same 
end, and make it possible for a pardon to be issued. 
But God, more excellent in wisdom than man, was 
equal to the emergency. He looked into his own 
fold, and there found a Lamb without spot or blemish, 

250 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 251 

whose sacrifice the law could accept as an equivalent, 
and thus make it possible for God to extend pardon 
to transgressors without disregard of his own decree ; 
and thus the death of Christ made it possible for God 
to be " just, and yet the justifier of the unjust." 

In this manner, then, was the first of the two 
obstacles in the way of our salvation removed. The 
obstruction which man's transgression to divine law 
had heaved up in his path heavenward was swept 
away. Heaven now, as a city whose gates are ever 
open, lay ahead of him ; and up to its shining entrances 
ran a straight and unimpeded path. But would 
man walk in it ? That was the question which re- 
mained. The moment the breath went out of Christ 
as he hung upon the cross, that very moment God 
could offer pardon to man ; that very moment he 
did offer it. But would man accept it ? No longer 
might any speculate what were the feelings of God 
toward the race. In Christ his love and desire to 
save were advertised beyond mistake. The dying 
cry of the Only-Begotten not only rent the veil 
of the temple ; it parted the investiture which had 
concealed the character of God : and not only men, 
but angels, for the first time, saw what they had 
long desired to look into. Never more might the 
universe be in doubt as to the nature of its great 
Head. In the blood of Jesus, the love, the tencler- 
ness* the pity, of the Father, are seen to flow in a 
perpetual tide. When the darkness of the crucifixion 
melted away, the world beheld the nature of God 
as our eyes behold an undraped column at noon- 



252 AND WHY NEEDED. 

day: above, the sky was cloudless; and the light 
which bathed it from apex to base was intense, fade- 
less, and serene. 

The first part of the problem was now and thus 
solved. How God felt, the world knew ; how man 
felt, it was yet to discover. The first obstacle to sal- 
vation was removed : the second remained. 

The second obstacle, I say, — the enmity of the hu- 
man heart, — remained. The death of Christ wrought 
no change in man. He gazed with eyes unlighted, with 
set and dogged look, at the exhibition of the cross. 
The heaven-sent Saviour, who came to bear the pun- 
ishment of his sins, was hooted at and denounced 
while he lived, and gibed and jeered at as he expired. 
Man's heart remained unchanged. Rebel still against 
God's law, he gloried in his rebellion. He refused 
all overtures of mercy. He scoffed at pardon, or, if 
he did not scoff, treated God's solicitude with cool 
and studied indifference. But why employ the past 
tense. Why say man did it ? Rather let me say 
man does ; for, in describing what was, do I not also 
describe what is ? Need I go out of this audience 
for subjects from which to sketch the portrait of 
neglect and cool indifference to God's merciful incli- 
nation to man ? Are there not, here and now, in this 
room, men and women who present in living form 
and feature the very face and figure of this spiritual 
carelessness and unconcern ? Are there not here and 
there persons in this congregation who feel them- 
selves to be plain, undeniable proof and evidence of 
what we claim ? In your own hearts, my hearers, 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 253 

behold the breathing, animate demonstration of the 
truth, that although Christ has died, although heaven 
has done its utmost to save, although in infinite 
mercy God has removed by the death of Christ the 
first obstacle to your salvation, yet the second obstacle 
— the wickedness of your own hearts — lifts between 
you and hope its huge impediment still. Behold 
and realize to-day what the impediment to your 
salvation is. It is not the harshness nor the strict- 
ness of God, nor the hardness of the terms pre- 
scribed, nor justice, which has no pity. No: it is 
none of these. If you are lost, it will not be owing 
to these. Not from any thing outside do you need 
deliverance. The deliverance you need, my friend, is 
deliverance from yourself. You are your own im- 
pediment, and the only impediment there is between 
you and heaven. You lack not the offer of pardon 
from the pardoning power : that offer is made you ; in 
His name I make it now. What you lack, friend, is 
a desire to be pardoned. You will not accept for- 
giveness ; and the lack of this desire is now what 
constitutes the only impediment between you and 
heaven, and blinds your eyes to all the radiant and 
outstreaming glories of it. Alas that men called 
learned, in the face of these facts, should continue to 
teach that there is no enmity in man's heart to God, 
and no persistent rebellion to his laws; no reason why 
any should worry themselves concerning their state 
and condition, when life and breath, and all these 
gracious offers of pardon, have passed away forever ! 
Now, before we proceed to discuss how God, 



254 AND WHY NEEDED. 

through the atonement, seeks to remove this, — the 
second obstacle to our salvation, — let us pause a mo- 
ment, and interject a few explanatory remarks. Be- 
fore we discuss how this enmity to God in the human 
heart can be removed, let us get a clear conception 
as to the need of its removal; for here logically 
comes in the consideration of the new birth, or what 
is more often called a " change of heart." 

Now, no government by an official act can make a 
disloyal subject loyal. Suppose that, during the re- 
bellion, when it was in all its arrogance and power, 
our government at Washington had issued a procla- 
mation of pardon to every rebel, from the general-in- 
chief down to the private in the ranks : would that 
proclamation of pardon have made a single rebel less 
rebellious ? Would it have taken the spirit of revolt, 
of enmity, out of a single heart, and supplanted it 
with the spirit of loyalty and love ? " Of course not," 
you say. " But why ? " I inquire. " Because," you re- 
spond, in the very words I used at the start, " no gov- 
ernment can by such an official act change the feel- 
ings of its subjects." So, then, we agree in this, — that 
the presence of the strongest desire on the part of the 
government to have iw subjects loyal does not make 
them loyal ; nor is it possible for that government, 
by any act or effort, to take discontent and enmity out 
of the heart of those who are filled with such feel- 
ings. And the reason is, because you cannot legis- 
late feelings into men. You cannot by official acts 
make enemies friendly. You cannot, at will, change 
hatred to love. 



NEED OF 'AN ATONEMENT, 255 

But we all agree, furthermore, in this, — that such a 
change must take place in the hearts of the rebellious 
or ever it is safe or practicable for the government to 
admit them to share in its honors and service. It 
would be governmental suicide to permit the clislo} 7 al 
and hostile portion of its subjects to hold sway and 
power ; and especially would it be destructive and 
suicidal if the hostile party hated not merely the 
government itself, but more bitterly yet the princi- 
ples on which the government was founded. The 
claim, for instance, which the nation set up and 
insisted on, the idea upon which all our reconstruction 
acts were based, was this, — that the several State 
governments south should be constructed on a loyal 
basis, and administered by loyal men. The disloyal, 
the hostile, the unrepentant rebels, as we all insisted, 
and rightly too, were in such a state of mind as to 
disqualify them from sharing in the service and emolu- 
ments of public affairs. The nation insisted that no 
unchanged, unrepentant rebel should be admitted to 
a place in the government. Pardon should be ex- 
tended only on the evidence of repentance and re- 
turning loyalty. This principle was correct. The 
obstacle in the way of the restoration of the South 
to forfeited rights and forgiveness was, as we all 
know, not harshness on the part of the government, 
not a disinclination to forgive, not because it was 
not possible for it to forgive ; but the obstacle, the 
only obstacle, was the unrepentant attitude and re- 
fusal on the part of the South to be pardoned. 

The analogy between these, in their relation to our 



256 AND WHY NEEDED. 

government, and those who remain impenitent before 
the government of God, is very close. By the death 
of Christ, God is able to extend pardon to all. He 
does extend it; but many refuse. Now, God cannot 
legislate holy affections into a sinner's heart, any 
more than Congress could loyal affections into a 
Southern rebel. God cannot save a man against his 
will and desire. What is wanted, therefore, on the 
part of man, is a desire to be saved. What you 
need is a change of feeling toward God, my friend. 
Your present indifference needs to be supplanted with 
interest ; your present opposition, with concurrence ; 
your refusal, with assent ; your rejection, with ac- 
ceptance. This, then, you see, is the obstacle to 
your salvation, — you are in no state of feeling to ac- 
cept it. Observe how free this, is from m} r sticism. 
How clearly you can perceive why you are not saved, 
if you shall not be ! Turn your eye inward, and 
see in yourself the only obstacle between you and 
heaven. 

It seems to me that I could never pardon some 
preachers for making this subject so mysterious. 
Regeneration, or the removal of the second obstacle 
to man's salvation, is lifted by some religious teach- 
ers far into the clouds which float along the ex- 
tremest boundary of human vision. They cover it up 
with so many fine definitions, they swathe it in so 
many texts of Scripture, they bewilder the hearer 
with so many vehement exhortations, that the mind 
of an angel would be befogged, and the audience go 
away laboring under certain evangelical impressions 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 257 

it is true, but in reality no wiser ; seeing no more 
clearly the real point than they did the last time they 
were inundated by such a torrent of words. 

Now, there is, in fact, no more difficulty in under- 
standing this second obstacle to salvation than the 
first. States and dispositions of heart are no more 
mysterious than the acts which flow from them. 
There is not an individual here who is not able to 
say whether he is ready now to accept forgiveness 
of his sins or not. If he is not ready, whether from 
this cause or that, there is not a man here who 
does not see just why he is not forgiven : it is because 
he prefers not to be. There is no mysticism about 
it ; and any man, whether in his sermons or prayers, 
who makes the need of a change of heart or feelings 
mysterious, throws a mystery around it which springs 
only from his own ignorance. 

Now, my hearers, you understand fully what the 
second obstacle to man's salvation is, — the enmity of 
the human heart. You see that the death of Christ 
did not remove it, but that it exists the same as 
ever to-day ; that, while it so exists in your heart, it 
not only prevents you from applying for pardon, but 
also prevents God from granting it ; and hence there 
was, after the death of Christ, a need that some spe- 
cial agency should be established, by the workings 
of which the second obstacle should be removed. 
And at this point I say, that the same love, which, by 
the death of Christ, removed the first obstacle to our 
pardon, such as our transgression of the law pre- 
sented, removed also the second, such as our inherent 



258 AND WHY NEEDED. 

wickedness and hostility to God presented. Of this 
I will now proceed to speak. 

But let me, in the first place, remark, that God 
accomplishes his ends, not by the exercise of arbitrary 
power, but"through the agency of means. 

The atonement is not an exhibition of omnipotence ; 
it is not to be considered as the highest demon- 
stration of power : it is to be regarded, rather, as a 
provision, a medium, an expedient; the result and 
proof of infinite wisdom, rather than of might. At 
the crucifixion, God did not lift the world, as on the 
crest of a wave, to the desired altitude, and on that 
level roll the generations onward. He started a cur- 
rent of holy influences rather, upon which the race 
was to be gradually lifted, and urged along as ships 
which sail an ever-deepening channel are lifted and 
impelled by tides which swell and gather volume as 
they flow. The death of Christ, substituted before the 
law in the place of man's proper punishment, was 
the means he introduced to remove the first obstacle to 
our salvation. So accustom yourselves to regard it, 
my hearers. In the cross of the Son behold the wis- 
dom of the Father. Consider it, not as an arbitrary, 
isolated act, but as a device, a provision, to extricate 
the race from the embarrassment and woe of their 
sinful position in a way honorable to the Deity, and 
not humiliating to man. Regard the death of Christ 
in its connections also. It stands not alone. It is 
not the temple : it is the corner-stone upon which the 
whole temple, fitly framed together, is builded. It is 
the central and pre-eminent sun of the gospel system ; 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 259 

but around it many other spheres, perfect and full- 
orbed, revolve, no less brilliant and worthy of ad- 
miration because they shine with a radiance borrowed 
from the central globe. I would not in an ignorant 
and indiscriminating piety give to the Son that 
homage which belongs to the Spirit. I would not 
remember Him who intercedes in heaven to the exclu- 
sion of Him who operates on the earth. I would not 
close my eyes, as one in trance, and dream of Him 
whom I hope to see by and by face to face, thereby 
making myself unable to see Him who stands by my 
very side. I need the Advocate ; but do I less need 
the Comforter ? I need the blood ; but do I less need 
the quickening and applying Spirit ? I need the 
mediation, the atoniDg efficacy, of Christ ; but need 
I less the "seal and witness" of the Holy Ghost? 
Xo ! In the clear blue above me I suspend the twain, 
which, like two stars, each at its fullest orb, equal 
in radiant girth, lambent and intense, commingle their 
rays, and together light my pathway toward that city 
over which they do and shall forever shine. 

Nor would I, as some seem to do, lose sight of the 
part man has to play in the atonement scheme. Men 
are not tossed about on the tides of evil like so many 
pieces of precious wood, which God, through the 
atonement, collects, and restores to their former posi- 
tion in the vast frame of universal affairs from which 
they have slipped. Man is an agent. Man is an 
electur. With him, by an indestructible endowment, 
is the power to act and choose. Acceptance and 
refusal are, and must ever be, his. This is what I 



260 AND WHY NEEDED. 

meant, when I said, a moment ago, that the atone- 
ment scheme does not humiliate man. God respects 
his own creation, and disturbs not its functional pre- 
rogatives. The atonement enslaves and enervates 
no man. It makes no attempt to rob man of his free 
agency : it puts no gag into his mouth, no fetter on 
his thought, no check upon his propelling powers. 
God is no tyrant : he wishes no unwilling subjects. 
There is not a man or woman here compelled, beyond 
the compulsion of conscience and reason, to accept 
his offer. Whether you love him or not, you must 
at least, all of you, admire the manner in which he 
invites you to love him. " Come," he says, " let us 
reason together." Is there any compulsion, any 
tyranny, in that? "Choose ye this day whom ye 
will serve : if the Lord is God, follow him ; if Baal, 
follow him." How considerate that is ! how it honors 
your judgment ! how it appeals to your power of 
proper decision ! I desire that each of you should un- 
derstand that the system of theology I preach is not 
a system of ropes and fetters to bind and drag you 
with ; it is not a system of dictation, of gags and 
withs. I preach to you as I would argue before a 
jury. Mine is the duty of explanation, entreaty ; 
yours to choose and decide. No slander was ever 
more palpably such than the assertion, that the evan- 
gelical religion is a religion of feeling independent 
of intellect ; that the orthodox system ostracizes 
reason ; that its churches allow no latitude of opin- 
ion. Yet as a lie repeated is at last a lie believed, 
so, by constant reiteration, this assertion has become 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 261 

stamped into the belief of many. It has no truth in 
fact. Wherein we differ from some is in this, — some 
suppose that there can be no latitude of opinion in 
religion while there is any thing to have an opinion 
upon ; and so they sweep Christ out of Christianity, 
and the Bible out of theology, and then, when they 
have nothing to differ upon, call their blank negation 
liberality of opinion, and plume themselves upon 
thinking as they please after they have buried under 
a flat denial all that is really worth thinking upon. 
Why, my hearers, how can the atonement be sub- 
versive of intellect, when, in all its appeals, it leaves 
every thing to the decision of intellect ? when it is, ' 
from beginning to end, a system of means, a system 
of persuasion, a system of entreaty, ignoring at every 
point, and in I care not what emergency, all compul- 
sion, all force, all violence ? 

But to return. I said that the second obstacle, as 
the first, was removed by the use of means. The 
thing needed, you remember, was a disposition on 
the part of man to be saved. What stood in the 
way was the indifference and opposition of the human 
heart to accept the terms of pardon proposed. Let 
us now ascertain by what means God seeks to remove 
this indifference and opposition. 

There are then, I remark, three means employed, 
all of which, independent of or connected with each 
other, are calculated to meet the end proposed. Tho 
three may be thus set in order : — 

1. The death of Christ as a subject of reflection. 

2. The ministry of the word as a system of induce- 
ments. 



262 AND WHY NEEDED. 

3. The influence of the Holy Ghost. 

Time only remains for me to speak of the first of 
these three means calculated to remove the enmity 
of the human heart to God ; viz., the death of Christ 
as a subject of reflection. 

There is something impressive and solemn in the 
thought of death. When life is surrendered from 
principle ; when a man voluntarily yields it up in 
accordance with his convictions of duty, or from 
the promptings of a noble, humane impulse to save, 
— the world pays its universal homage to his name. 
The list of martyrs is long ; and the number of those 
who died for human weal is beyond count. The 
pages of history are fragrant with the odor of their 
deeds. From the record of their lives the student 
draws his noblest aspirations ; and their elegy sounds 
with more of an heroic than of a funereal strain, and 
with an ever-accumulating swell. It betters a man 
to pause occasionally, and think of the past ; of the 
thousands, not unknown to fame, who have died in 
battle that Liberty might have a foothold on the 
earth, and upon the elevation of whose graves, as 
upon a sure foundation, she has at last builded her 
temple ; of those other thousands whose names 
have faded like extinguished stars from the firma- 
ment of human knowledge, and yet whose glory, 
like beams of light whose far-distant source has 
fallen, add to the general illumination of the sky. 

There is not a name of men and women back of me, 
who died thus, to which I am not bound in gratitude. 
There is not a person in all that vast array, who made 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT, 263 

one unselfish effort for knowledge, one heroic en- 
deavor for liberty, who endured a single sacrifice for 
principle, to whom I am not held in debt. From the 
silence of graves long forgotten, from the depth of 
dungeons — now fortunately in ruins — where they 
expired, they put forth their eloquent and impressive 
claim ; and my heart, in its every beat of joy and 
peace and hope, acknowledges its gratitude. But is 
there not a name back of me more radiant than all 
names ? Is there not an act which is to the constel- 
lated deeds of history what the sun is to the stars 
when he rises with far-reaching and upstreaming 
glory out of the east ? Is there not one face, which, 
unseen by us all, has nevertheless imprinted itself 
with an indelible impress upon the tablet of our 
minds ? It is the name and face of Jesus, and the 
act is his death for us on Calvary. It was there that 
hope was born for a dying race. It was there that 
peace, which passeth understanding, became a com- 
ponent and fragrant part of the moral atmosphere, 
which men no sooner inhaled than their feverish 
tossings and murmurs ceased, and they found the 
long-sought rest. It was then and there, my hearer, 
stranger or friend, that a new and glorious possibility 
was opened up to you and me ; and before us, to-day, 
this possibility of pardon of all our sins, and recon- 
ciliation with God, from whom we became estranged, 
stretches its avenue of promise, and the glory of the 
city into which it leads invites us to enter. Will 
you enter ? Let your mind in this closing moment 
run backward alone: the line of the centuries. How 



264 AND WHY NEEDED. 

quickly your thought has flashed itself across the gulf 
of nineteen hundred years ! Now take your stand on 
Calvary, and crowding closely to the foot of the cross, 
unnoticed amid the darkness by the soldiery, look 
upward into the face of your dying Lord. Look 
well at that face. Why? Because it is the face 
of the only man who ever died for his foes. Stand- 
ing there, say, knowing that you speak with the 
accuracy of fact, " This, then, is the man who died 
for me ; this is he who voluntarily, out of love for 
me, took my place before the law, and hangs here 
suffering the sufferings which I should suffer, dying 
that I may live. Never was love like unto this; 
never a death like unto thine, my Saviour." Is there 
a man or woman here, whose heart is not hardened 
beyond the susceptibility of gratitude, not willing, 
nay, who does not rejoice, to say, as did the sceptical 
but convinced Thomas, " My Lord and my God " ? 

" Without the shedding of blood is no remission." 
Let our thoughts, like a song, come back to the 
melody of the opening note. At the cross we stood 
when we began ; and now, at the close, we group 
ourselves, hand linked in hand, around the same. 
Guilty as we are, it is our only hope. Thank God, it 
is a perfect hope ! Let me but clasp it with my arm ; 
let me but touch it with my hand ; let me but see it 
even ; let me but send a pleading glance, in djdng, 
toward it, — and the petition of that silent, that un- 
uttered trust, shall bring salvation to my soul. O 
friends ! it takes age ; it takes moral failure ; it 
takes the knowledge of multiplying sinfulness; it 



NEED OF AN ATONEMENT. 265 

takes the bitter consciousness which living brings ; 
the self-mistrust, the self-conviction, tearful and fall 
of foreboding, which cannot lift even its eyes toward 
heaven, but beats upon the breast, and cries, " God 
be merciful to me, a sinner!" — it takes all this, I 
say, to make one realize the value, the necessity, the 
sweet blessedness, of the cross. If there is one that 
loves me here, if there is one that trusts me, if there 
is one whose ears are open to my voice, I saj^, My 
friend, come here and stand with me beside and un- 
derneath the cross, and we will hold our sinfulness 
up ; we will unfold all our lives; we will open up all 
our inmost thoughts, feeling as if the eyes of heaven 
looked through it, and the voice of God was in it, 
and hear what it will say. What does it say ? Say ? 
It says, " Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow ; though they be red like crim- 
son, they shall be as wool." And what shall we re- 
spond ? Respond? "Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." 

12 



SABBATH MOBJVIJfG, JAN. 21, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.-THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN 

LANDS.* 

"The entrance of Thy words giveth light." — Ps. cxix. 130. 

THERE is nothing so gracious in nature, nothing 
so essential, as light. Its offices are manifold, 
its benefits beyond enumeration. It came into our 
atmosphere at the command of God, and its coming 
marked the first epoch in creation. Until it came, 
the earth was without form, and void. Darkness was 
upon the face of the deep. The earth was as a child 
conceived, but not born. It was a world in embryo : 
it existed in germinal condition. The elementary 
forces were there, but unconnected, and without 
form. The presence of God must be felt among 
them before they would assume their proper propor- 
tions and become instinct with life. And so God 
caused his Spirit to move upon the face of the waters ; 
and a voice went forth through the darkness, at the 
sound of which the darkness faded, and light was. 
And God saw the light, and it was good. 

* Preached on the occasion of the annual collection for the Foreign Board. 
266 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 267 

The Bible is the word of God. In it whatever he 
has spoken to man is recorded. In it are revealed the 
wisdom and the love of Heaven toward men. It is to 
men in their spiritual relation what the sun itself is 
to nature. Light and all profitable germination result 
from its presence. The analogy is so close, that the 
inspired writers have used it in many places to de- 
scribe its power and benevolent action among men. 
The word "light" is frequently employed to denote 
the blessings in the kingdom of grace. The rank 
that it holds in inspired language is seen when you 
recall how closely it has been associated with the 
Saviour. Christ is called by John the " Light of the 
world." It was chosen by Jesus himself to denote 
that, which is most expressive of piety, when he 
charged his disciples " that their light should shine 
before men." The sweetest of all prayers, as it 
often seems to us amid darkness, is the supplica- 
tion, that " God would lift up the light of his coun- 
tenance upon us." In all languages, even in heathen 
tongues, it is universally used to express joy and 
gladness and prosperity. It is, as you see, a word 
of dignity and grace ; a word of beautiful and noble 
use ; a word never associated with vice and suffering 
and pain ; a word honored of God and man ; a word 
symbolic only of blessings. Does the Bible deserve 
so noble an epithet? What does it do, what does 
it introduce among men, that we should assent to 
the assertion of the text, and say, that the entrance 
of the Word giveth light ? I will briefly point out to 
you what it accomplishes. 



268 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

And, in the first place, it produces a great change. 

This change is not realized by us, because we do 
not go far enough back in the history of nations to 
.appreciate it, to note the changes produced by its 
introduction. If I say that it underlies our civiliza- 
tion, that it is the parent of intellectual activity as 
we behold it to-day, your minds instantly revert to 
France, or to some people among whom the word 
of God is not credited, where its inspiration is little 
felt ; and you say, " Instead of the Bible being the 
source of civilization, the nurse of arts, the handmaid 
of science, the fact is, that the most civilized, the 
most refined nation in the world does not accept the 
Bible as God's revelation: it does not enter as a 
power into their daily life." And that would be 
apparently true, and yet in reality false. It is a super- 
ficial statement. It does not cover the whole ground. 
Go back to the time when France was not France, 
but Gaul ; when the land was not the home of a 
civilized, but of a barbarous people ; when, in the 
place of a nation composed of a homogeneous race, 
there were only savage tribes, rude, ignorant, and 
debased ; when modern France — the France you 
think of when I speak of the Bible as underlying all 
its civilization — existed only in its basal elements, 
only in chaotic state, just as the world existed ere the 
Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, — go 
back to this period, I saj r , and see if it was not the 
entrance of God's word among those heathen tril 
that brought light. What magnetic power was it 
that drew all those many tribes together, and held 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 269 

thern by its attraction in one compact mass ? "What 
first planted letters in that Gallic soil, since too vain 
and proud to acknowledge the hand that first made 
it fertile ? In whose name were her earliest archi- 
tectural attempts undertaken? On what altars did 
her poesy first light her feeble fires ? Who trained 
her children first to sing ? I say, speaking with the 
accuracy of history, that France owes her birth as a 
nation, owes the birth of her arts and literature and 
culture, to the Bible. As with England and Scot- 
land and Germany, it was the introduction of Chris- 
tianity, bringing in its train civilization, with all the 
blessings it includes, which gave existence to France, 
rescuing her land and people from gross barbarism. 
Well would it have been for France had she re- 
membered her early obligations to the Bible, and 
walked more strictly in the path that it points out 
alike to nations and to men. She bleeds to-day, and 
there is no balm for her wounds ; for the balm she 
needs, and might have had, she has for years proudly 
and scornfully rejected. 

You see, all of you, that, if you would properly 
measure the value of the Bible to a nation, you must 
study the question historically. You must not look 
at it as it is, but as it was in contrast with what it 
is. You must not look at the result, but search for 
the causes that produced the result. And, looking at 
thein in this light, I say that France and England 
and Germany, and every civilized nation on the face 
of the earth to-day, owe as much more to the Bible 
than the Sandwich-Islanders do as their civilization is 



270 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

fuller and richer than theirs. There never was a 
ruder, coarser, more savage race under heaven than 
that race from which we derive our origin, — the 
Anglo-Saxon, A fierce, barbarous stock it was, sin- 
ewy, lithe, and supple, but with the instincts of a 
tiger and the fierceness of a wild boar, — -a race 
whose very mirth was grim and horrid ; whose joy 
was the joy of an untamed passion for bloodshed ; 
whose revelry was like the feast of vultures ; and 
whose highest idea of heaven was a prolonged ca- 
rousal, at which they should be served by those whom 
they had enslaved by their victories, and drink their 
wine from the skulls of their enemies. Into such a 
wild, gnarled, and acrid stock the gospel slip was 
inserted. It thrived, demonstrating its divine energy 
by its growth. It expelled the old bitterness, sup- 
planting it by a sweeter sap. And where will you 
find in all the earth another tree so tall and shapely, 
so fragrant with blossoms, so laden with fruitful- 
ness, as is this of ours, which the Word and Spirit 
of God have brought forth from the old Saxon trunk ? 
The truest judgment, the widest charity, the noblest 
impulses, come from those who recall what their an- 
cestors were. None other can realize what they owe 
to the Word of God. 

The same difficulty meets one in his attempt to set 
forth what we owe individually to the Bible. The 
magnitude of the blessing makes a full appreciation 
impossible. Deprivation is, in some cases, the only 
source of knowledge touching the value of what we 
have enjoyed. The preciousness of liberty is nevei 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 271 

felt until we are curtailed in our freedom. One day 
of blindness could alone teach us how much of our 
happiness and usefulness is due to the light. Pain 
and weakness must be felt before we can appreciate 
health. Now, this is eminently true touching our 
feeling as to the benefits we have derived from the 
Bible. We were born in a Christian land, where the 
customs, habits, intellectual state, and social and moral 
conditions, are all Christian. All knowledge comes 
to us by comparison ; and we who have lived in this 
country, never visited heathen lands, never seen how 
much like brutes, and how little like human beings, 
their peoples are, — we cannot measure the blessings 
we enjoy. The most common and essential institu- 
tions, the most ennobling conceptions of our lives, 
are all, unnoted as they are by us, offshoots of the 
Bible. Home is a Bible gift ; and we all owe more 
to home influence than to any other. It did more to 
shape our lives, mould our minds, form our habits, 
discipline our powers, and make possible that measure 
of success we have attained in life, than any of us 
can estimate. The full-grown tree forgets the weak- 
ness and exposed condition of its early state : it for- 
gets that it was braced and supported, fenced from 
danger, and shielded from violence ; forgets that there 
was a time when the care and pressure of one hand 
directed it, and made all its growing forces go out in 
right directions. And yet the tree owes to that early 
training all its symmetry, and the full rounded ex- 
pression of its life. So it is with us. We have out- 
grown the home care, the home contact. We stand 



272 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

strong, well braced, towering in all the strength and 
altitude of independent, individual life ; but we have 
not outgrown the home influence. We see it no 
longer in the growth ; but we do see it in the result 
of our life. It is just so with every man in relation 
to his mother. There was a time when " mother " 
meant literally every thing to us. We were in every 
thing dependent upon her. She fed us ; she clothed 
us ; she taught us ; she corrected our faults, encour- 
aged our virtues. We were shaped by her power as 
the plastic model is shaped by the careful touch of the 
artist. We did not appreciate her influence then : 
we have grown to understand it better since. We 
all know, that beyond all effort of ours, beyond 
all skill, beyond all our industry, we owe the hap- 
piness and influence of our lives to those influences 
that were around us in infancy and youth. Through 
the apprehension of what you owe to the home in- 
fluence and maternal influence, see how much you 
owe to the influence of the Bible. It was the Bible, 
remember to-day, that gave them both to you ; that 
made home represent something more than a locality, 
and "mother" more than a name. It was religion 
which clothed these with moral significance, and 
enabled them to minister to the high necessities of 
your natures. Go to lands where the Bible is un- 
known, and what does home mean ? Compare the 
influence of a heathen mother to the influence of a 
Christian mother upon her children. Had the prov- 
idence of birth located you in India instead of 
America, in Ceylon instead of New England, what, 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 273 

intellectually and morally, would you have been to- 
day ? Study the contrast a moment ; and let a cor- 
rect understanding of these things show you your 
indebtedness to this book, touching which millions 
of human beings, as immortal as you, know absolutely 
nothing. Say, in view of these things, whether it 
is a mere sentiment which has urged this church for 
sixty years to come together, and in gratitude to God, 
and in acknowledgment of what they owe to the 
Scriptures, to contribute of their substance that the 
Bible may go abroad, and be sent on its beneficent 
mission to the remotest corner of the globe. 

These are but the material benefits you have 
derived from the Bible ; and how vast, how multiform, 
they are, you can judge. But this is the least use 
that it serves. The material and civil advantages 
that attend its introduction among a people are as 
nothing beside the spiritual blessings it confers. 
They are only incidental, — merely springs and chan- 
nels fed by the one noble current of religious emotion 
and experience on which the hopes of man as an im- 
mortal being float. The true use of the Bible, or of 
any agent or influence to man, is that which relates 
to his soul ; which brings the possibilities of moral 
education to him, and takes the element of uncer- 
tainty out of that portion of his existence which lies 
on the other side of the grave. Had it taught you 
only how to feed and clothe yourselves properly, 
how to amass wealth, how to multiply the appliac 
of culture, it would not be the book that it is to you ; 
neither would there be any special moral obligation 

12* 



274 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

resting on you to give it unto others. It is because 
it has taught you more than this ; because it has re- 
vealed God to you, made you aware of your moral 
condition, introduced you to a Saviour's love, to 
that order of life which springs therefrom, and to 
an eternal destiny beyond the tomb, — it is because 
it has done this for you that you owe to it a measure- 
less debt, and to man a duty whose performance is 
imperative. 

Do not think I trifle with your feelings, much less 
with the precious name of Jesus, when I inquire at 
what you value your faith. For what would you 
part with your hope in Christ? How dear is it to 
you ? " Dearer than life," you say. " I love my Sa- 
viour better than father or mother, better than coun- 
try, better than kindred. I owe to him a debt greater 
than I can ever pay. Perish all worldly ambitions, 
vanish all worldly joys, parted be all earthly ties: 
leave me only my Saviour. Let but my hand, amid 
the overflowing of all billows, retain its hold of the 
cross, and I will rejoice amid my tribulations, and 
sing psalms in the night of my sorrow." But is the 
Saviour more to you than to a man in India? Is 
redemption any more needed by you? is salvation 
sweeter? is heaven dearer? Do you stand in any 
greater need of these things than those who dwell 
in tents or the islands of the sea? Are not they 
immortal as well as you? Do they need a Saviour 
less ? Is there not a great brotherhood of birth, of 
capacity, of destiny, to us all ? Are we who sit in 
this church to-day, enjoying all of these privileges, 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEXD 275 

blessed with this full, sweet gospel light, — are we 
not their brethren ? Do you think that distance in 
space, that difference in condition, can loosen a single 
strand of this fraternal bond with which God has con- 
nected us all ? Can they annul the obligation which 
such a divinely-ordained relationship imposes ? Xo, 
my friends : these things are fixed and absolute ; they 
remain and abide through all time. Do you think 
that when you have done your duty to your family, 
to society, to your country, you have done all, dis- 
charged your full obligation ? Is there not a larger 
circumference yet lying outside and bej^ond all these, 
of which you are the centre ? Do you not owe some- 
thing, does not every man owe something, to the 
world at large lying in wickedness? Is there not a 
dut)^ he owes to the race as a race ? Can he look at 
all those millions that live in India, in China, in 
Arabia, in the islands of the sea, and say, " These 
are nothing to me. I know that they are ignorant 
and sinful ; I know that they are wretched and bru- 
tal: but I am not responsible for their condition"? 
I say 3'ou are responsible. If there is any way by 
which you can better a single living being, then, 
from the day when such a possibility was born to 
you, you are responsible for every undesirable thing 
in his condition from which you might have relieved 
him. To that extent you are responsible ; and your 
responsibilit} r was not caused by, neither does it rest 
on, any election of yours, but upon the great law of 
co-existence and kinship through nature, and the in- 
junction of Almighty God. 



276 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

Now, the voice of all these millions is coming to us 
to-day. A petition signed by an innumerable multi- 
tude is now being read before the congress of your 
consciences. It asks for what ? What is the burden 
of this prayer coming up from this mighty constitu- 
ency whom we have been elected by God to serve ? 
Listen now while the spirit of universal progress, of 
universal reconciliation with God, publishes it aloud, 
and sends it out over your sleeping hearts as a bugle- 
call is sent forth over a slumbering army, calling it 
to arms. 

They ask for the Bible. They say with one voice, 
with one gesture of entreaty, " Give us the word of 
God, — that word which is able to make us wise unto 
salvation. We know that 3^ou are wise : remember 
that we are ignorant. We know that you are happy: 
remember our misery. We know that you are fa- 
vored: remember our hard condition. O brothers! 
give us the knowledge of Christianity." This, I say, 
is the voice that comes to us ; this is the petition sub- 
mitted to you to-day. What response will you give 
to the voice ? What action will you take on the 
petition ? 

You know what the action of this church has 
always been touching this matter. Never did it 
deny the universal brotherhood with the race. 
When the slave needed a champion, it found one 
here. When the nation's peril was such that it 
needed the help of the churches, and the sanction of 
religion upon its course, this pulpit proclaimed fear- 
lessly the great principle of universal brotherhood, 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 277 

and the duty of patriotism ; and whenever any cause 
dear to man and accepted of God, whether from the 
north or the south, from the east or the west, has 
come to this building for help, it has never yet been 
turned empty away. This is the glory of your record, 
the eminent characteristic of your history. But one 
cause, or rather one branch of the great cause, has, 
from the very commencement of your career, been 
received with unusual interest, with most touching 
sympathy. Whoever else might forget the spiritual 
necessities of foreign lands, this church never forgot 
them. The generations that have worshipped in this 
room, that were taught devotion at this altar, and 
many of them buried from this house, lived and died 
in the hope that the name of Jesus would at last be 
known in every land. The ambition of their faith 
was not local, but cosmopolitan : it embraced the 
world. Year after year, when the great missionary 
undertakings were but experiments, when returns 
were small, and results meagre, they never faltered. 
Their faith never wavered for an instant. The} 7 had 
no misgivings as to their duty. They kept on giving 
and praying. Whenever one passed into heaven, 
another was born into the circle of their service 
and hope. ' They cast their bread upon the waters ; 
and God returned to them a hundred-fold. Other 
churches were formed, flourished, and then fell into 
pieces ; but here we abide unto this day, blessed of 
God, and filled, I trust, with the Holy Ghost. 

What will you say to-day to the faith and hope of 
your past ? Will you say it was vain ? that it was 



278 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

foolish ? Shall we, or shall we not, add another link 
this morning to the golden chain that God has thrown 
around the neck of this church for its honor and 
ornament ? 

It is often said that the work of the Board is the 
work of the churches ; but, strictly speaking, it is not 
the work of the churches, but of the individual donors 
in the churches. You who give are individually repre- 
sented by the preachers of the gospel in the heathen 
world. You send them there ; you sustain them 
there. The good they do can be traced back to your 
contributions. You who are accustomed to give to 
this cause have enlightened many a darkened mind, 
melted many a stubborn heart, broken many a cap- 
tive's chain. Do not think that j^our influence for 
good is confined to America : you must journey far 
and wide if you would behold where it is working 
like the leaven in the loaf. In the desert and jungle, 
in the temple of heathen deities, in those abhorred 
localities where men eat the flesh of men, so brutal- 
ized are they by sin, you are represented, and rep- 
resented, too, by that gospel which " is the power of 
God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to 
the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." You are 
here ; but your agent is there, doing that enno- 
bling work whereunto you have sent him. Heaven 
will be full of surprises to many of you ; for many 
whose faces you never saw in the flesh will come and 
greet you in the spirit-land, and say, " To you I 
am indebted for the knowledge of the Saviour." I 
often think that you who are thus givers to Christ will 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 279 

wonder at nothing — no, not at all the glories of 
heaven — so much as at the number of stars in the 
crown of your reward. You had never preached ; 
you did not know that you had been a missionary ; 
you could not recall a single soul you had led to 
Christ, and yet many are credited to you in the book 
of God's remembrance. I mention it the more gladly 
because of the uplifting and ennobling thought with 
which it is connected. You are here in Boston, en- 
gaged in a purely secular life from day to day ; but 
through this society you are associated with the great 
spiritual movements the world over, and that army 
of religious teachers which is doing so much to ele- 
vate and save mankind. You are connected, I say, 
with those vast demonstrations of organized Christian 
effort which are changing for the better the habits 
and customs and policies of nations and tribes. You 
are not merely denizens of this city : you are inhab- 
itants of that great outlying realm of spiritual impulse 
and fervor, — citizens of that commonwealth of saintly 
men and women who legislate the pure laws of the 
age on the basis of the gospel, and put in practice 
the purest code of morals ever published to the race. 
You are of the number of those who lead " captivity 
captive," and bring good " gifts unto men." 

My friends, the gospel has not been in vain. 
The earth is not as it was. Men and nations are 
changed. The old warfares are hushed: their roar 
and murmur have died away. The triumphs of this 
age are not those of arms. They are not physical : 
they are moral. We have at last realized the proverb, 



280 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

that "he that ruleth his spirit is better than he 
that taketh a city." The heroism and prowess of 
men are shown through other media than the knightly 
lance and brazen shield. Brute force is no longer 
king. Mind and soul, reason and conscience, have 
possessed the throne, and rule the world with joint 
sovereignty. The victories of the age are those of 
peace and the forces that produce peace. As once 
it was a disgrace not to be a soldier, and bear arms for 
the king ; so now it is a loss of credit and honor not 
to have served in the ranks of those reforms whose 
object is the amelioration of mankind. Who lives, in 
any save the narrowest sense of life, to-day, if he is 
unconnected with those humane and religious move- 
ments, which, beyond all else, will make this age mem- 
orable in history, — who lives, I say, to-day, if he has 
not cast himself like a drop in the majestic current 
of religious effort, willing to be lost if he may only 
be allowed to mingle with and swell the tide which 
floats the hopes of men and the revealed glory of 
heaven to generations yet to be ? To breathe is not 
to live. Breath and physical motion are but the re- 
sult of that machinery which we have in common 
with the brutes. To live is to think, to act, to love 
and feel ; to keep our sympathies in the front rank of 
human progress ; to discipline our courage by every 
test of bravery God allows ; to navigate the world of 
being and of effort, as ships the globe, till we have 
sailed the full sphere of opportune, touched at every 
port, and voyaged on, until at last the soul, like some 
old argosy freighted with gold and spice and marvel- 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 281 

lous woods strong with precious odors, comes sailing, 
laden with the rich experiences of an active life, 
grandly to its home. This is to live ! 

For one, I rejoice to-day that I can connect myself, 
not merely with the agents and methods, but also 
with the result, of evangelization the world over. 
Wherever an idol has been burnt ; wherever a hea- 
then temple levelled ; wherever the bloody Juggernaut 
stands idle, its heavy wheels unstained with suicidal 
blood ; wherever gross ignorance once was, but is no 
more ; wherever superstition and priestcraft and cruel 
force have been supplanted by faith and liberty and 
love, — there I stand, joining in the joy of the delivered, 
and the greater joy of the deliverers. Arabia is not 
far distant. Often have I visited it in thought, and 
knelt in prayer upon its sands, praying for those who 
make those sands their home. China is not an un- 
known land, unseen, unloved, by me. I have stood 
at morn and night amid its swarming millions, amid 
the results of a civilization old when Christianity was 
born. I have read out of her books, that were hoary 
with age centuries before Europe knew how to print 
a page. And as I have thought of the millions who 
have lived and died for ages, of those other millions 
living and dying even yet without the gospel, I have 
felt like those whom John saw in vision, wea^ of 
groaning beneath the throne, and cried, " How long, 
O Lord ! how long ? " Well might the poet invoke 
the elements of air to aid the blessed work of spread- 
ing far and near the knowledge of the gospel. Come, 
ye winds, to whom the Spirit is likened, and ye 



282 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS, 

waves, that send your undulations round the globe, — 
come waft and roll the tidings of the cross from pole 
to pole. Bear the living seed to the desert, that it 
may bud and " blossom as the rose." We make 
the words of Scripture ours, and say, " How beauti- 
ful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ; that 
bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth sal- 
vation ! " 

The relation which this church has sustained since 
the Foreign Board was formed, has been, as you all 
know, peculiarly close and sympathetic. Many of 
your proudest memories are int wined with its own 
as flowers of the same color and fragrance. The first 
foreign missionary press ever projected originated here, 
and one-fourth of its entire cost was given by this 
church. That press was like a kernel of seed-corn. 
It has since multiplied itself a thousand-fold. All 
over the globe a hundred presses are at work, print- 
ing in almost every language and dialect known to 
man the words that bring " life and immortality to 
light." But the roots of this mighty power, — which 
I can liken unto nothing but the tree of life, whose 
" leaves are for the healing of the nations," — are 
here; and when the Scriptures shall have been dis- 
seminated everywhere, when a copy of the Bible 
shall have been put into every hand, and the histo- 
rian of that day shall search for the parent and birth- 
place of this mighty movement, he shall find them 
here. The roots of this tree, I say, can be found only 
in the soil beneath this pulpit. 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO SEND 283 

How I might multiply historical allusions ! In this 
church, in the year 1819, on the fifteenth day of Octo- 
ber, a little band of seventeen were formed into a church 
to evangelize the Sandwich Islands. When Mr. Coan 
last year was telling you from this desk of the thou- 
sands and thousands born unto God in those islands, — 
showing you how a nation had been born, as it were, 
in a day, — did you recall how that majestic movement, 
which gave an empire to Christ, was inaugurated in 
this room ? In this same room, — even here where we 
worship to-day, — a hundred and eighty missionaries, 
an audience in themselves, have received their part- 
ing instructions and benedictions. From this room 
they departed to their fields of labor. They jour- 
neyed to all parts of the globe. They went forth 
as ships sail out into fogs. Many never returned : 
some died under the spear of the savage ; some 
were beaten down by tropical heats ; some lived the 
full measure of their years, and their graves are wa- 
tered unto this day by the tears of those whom they 
rescued from barbarism and brought back to God. 
Is it an extravagant form of speech to say that I see 
these men and women before me to-day ? They stand 
clothed in white between you and me ! They hold 
harps in their hands. On each head is a crown. I 
know not the name of any ; for a new name has been 
given unto each. It is printed on their foreheads : 
each letter glows like a ray that comes from the heart 
of a diamond. Would that they might speak ! 
Would that they might tell you what they endured, 
what they accomplished, after they left this room, 



284 THE GOSPEL TO HEATHEN LANDS. 

until God took them ! Speak to us, ye true heralds 
of the cross ! Speak to us from the altar of that 
faith, destined to be universal, on which you laid 
yourselves as a living sacrifice ! Speak from those 
far-off graves where the swarth hands of your con- 
verts laid you ! Speak from the thrones of your exal- 
tation in heaven ! Speak from the circle of your in- 
visible presence in this familiar room, whose air at this 
moment you seem to possess ! Speak, and tell us, by 
the apprehension of your improved intelligence, what 
is the measure of our duty ! 

But if all these voices should be hushed ; if this 
mighty "cloud of witnesses" hovering above us were 
silent, and no sound should break forth from its vi- 
brant whiteness, — still command and exhortation 
would not be lacking. A voice whose authority is 
higher than theirs, whose injunction is more urgent, 
is now addressing us out of the ineffable glory itself. 
Rarely does heaven break its august silence ; rarely 
do its lips condescend to human speech, or deign to 
take upon themselves the harsh utterances of earth : 
but now, above the voices of " the spirits of just men 
made perfect," above the expressed solicitude of an- 
gels, whose joy it is to minister unto the saints, like a 
great sound which moves along its undulating course 
through perfect silence, descends upon us the com- 
mand of God. Shall I interpret the sound to you ? 
This is the command : hear it as coming to you out 
of heaven : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature." 



SABBATH MOBNING, JAN. 28, 1872. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC-THE ATONEMENT: HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 
"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed 

UNTO THE DAY OF REDEMPTION." — EpheS. iv. 30. 

THE enmity of the human heart to God, and its 
manifold depravities, were not removed at the 
death of Christ, as I have shown in a preceding dis- 
course, but remained in full force after the cruci- 
fixion. Pardon was offered, and refused. Man ab- 
solutely and obstinately rejected the overtures of 
Heaven. He would not be benefited by what, at an 
infinite cost, Heaven had provided for him. Salva- 
tion was possible ; but none would be saved. Man's 
sinfulness made him ungrateful, blind to his own 
interest, and persistent in wickedness ; and so it 
became necessary that a system of enlightenment, of 
persuasion, of regeneration, should be inaugurated, 
that the death of Christ, so far as the personal salva- 
tion of those for whom he had died was its object, 
might not be in vain. It was necessary that man's 
eyes should be opened to perceive his own personal 
needs, that he might be convicted of sin and danger, 

285 



286 THE ATONEMENT: 

and a desire to be reconciled with God be felt, in 
order that he might ask of God that help which he 
could now, with justice to himself, freely grant. 
Thus it came about, that, at the ascension of Christ, 
the Holy Spirit became the active representative of 
the divine endeavor to save men. When Christ de- 
parted, the Spirit came ; came to take his place ; 
came to push forward to its completion the sublime 
work which Jesus had carried only up to a certain 
point. The second and third persons of the Trinity 
have officially their distinct and respective work : as 
the Father has his in the plan of atoning for human 
sin, Christ was to make the atonement, while the Spirit 
was to incline the hearts of men to accept it. This, 
in brief, is the work, the mission, of the Spirit. As 
Christ met with opposition in performing his part 
of the great work of redemption ; as he was derided, 
resisted, and misunderstood : so now the Holy Spirit 
in his endeavors is resisted, derided, and misunder- 
stood. My topic then, this morning, is the resist- 
ance which men in their wickedness offer to the 
Holy Spirit in his efforts to save them. 

The fundamental principle upon which is based the 
necessity of the Spirit's assistance, or any assistance 
beyond that which man can render himself, is this, — 
that wickedness cannot change itself. A bad inclina- 
tion never becomes a good inclination by any process 
of growth or change. It must be eradicated by some 
extraneous force, if at all. There is no faculty of 
illumination in darkness : light from abroad must 
come into it and dispel it, or it will remain darkness 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 287 

forever. So it is with sinful qualities. Sin has no 
desire to be aught else than sin : if it had, it would 
not be sin. Nor has it any power to change itself. 
There are in it no virtuous forces whatever. It can 
generate and propagate only after its kind ; and 
against this proposition neither reason nor observa- 
tion can advance a syllable of objection. 

But what is the sequence of this position? In 
order to grasp it fully, inquire where, and of what 
character, is sin. You have heard men talk about 
sin as an impersonal matter, an unincarnated prin- 
ciple or tendency; something horrid, but mysteri- 
ous ; dreadful, but vague ; a principle in the moral 
realm as incomprehensible as an element which ever 
reveals its existence in terrible hints, but which has 
defied the skill of the laboratory to analyze and lo- 
cate. But, friends, no conception can be more erro- 
neous than this. Instead of sin being an impersonal 
matter, it can exist only in connection with personal 
beings. There is no sin in hell, save as expressed in 
devils ; there is none on earth, save as felt or mani- 
fested in man. Sin is not principle, is not element, 
is not tendency : it is perverted intelligence ; it is 
force purposely misdirected ; it is knowledge and 
capacity abused. Why, test it by its definitions. 
Say sin is disobedience : but disobedience implies 
an agent, and agency implies an act. Say that it 
is rebellion : but rebellion is the deed of a rebel ; 
and a rebel must be a being, spirit or man. Say 
it is perversion, "misdirection,". — the mildest word 
which Theodore Parker, with the vocabularies of 



288 THE ATONEMENT: 

twenty languages to select from, could possibly find : 
and again I say that there can be no misdirection 
without an agent to misdirect ; no perversion, unless 
you have intelligence and capacity to pervert. This 
you all see ; to this you assent. What, then, is it 
in which we are all agreed? In this, I respond; viz., 
that sin is unavoidably connected with p.ersons. 
There is no evil on the earth that is not incarnated. 
Christ did not die to deliver us from an atmospheric 
element. The Spirit does not war against impersonal 
qualities. God does not threaten a drift or tendency 
in the moral realm when he pronounces his curse 
upon sin. As sound must have a medium through 
which to travel, or it is not sound ; so sin must have 
a medium of expression, or it is not sin. Sin, if it 
exists at all, exists as individualized in man or spirit. 
An agent is the antecedent of all transgression. 
There is no wickedness independent of wicked thought, 
purpose, and act. 

When, therefore, it was said — to which you as- 
sented — that sin could not change itself, it was equiv- 
alent to saying and assenting to this proposition, — 
that the sinner could not change himself. It is only 
different forms in which to state the same identical 
truth. Wickedness cannot become goodness of its 
own power : therefore, as all wickedness exists only 
in connection with persons, no wicked person can 
become a good person unassisted by outside help. 
And this is precisely the position that the Scripture 
takes, as in Rom. viii. T : " The carnal mind is enmity 
against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 289 

neither indeed can be." At this point you see 
wherein, and how much, every one of us is depend- 
ent on the Spirit. We are dependent to the fullest 
measure, to the extreme extent, of incapacity. Wicked 
by nature, we are unable of ourselves to grow into 
any thing better. What the fields owe to the solar 
light and warmth we all owe to the Spirit. But for 
it, the very germs of holiness would have rotted in 
us, and our souls lain forever barren and unfruitful. 
There is not a star in all the firmament that owes so 
much to the sun which shines upon it, and by whose 
reflected light it glows, as we owe to the Spirit. 
There is not a bird that flies more dependent on 
the air it breathes, and beats with rapid wing, than 
we are upon the Spirit of God for every breath 
and movement we have had in virtue. To sum it 
all up in the most absolute of all forms of state- 
ment, we owe no more to Christ for making the 
atonement for us than we do to the Holy Spirit for 
inclining us to accept, and rendering us able to ap- 
preciate it. In either case, the necessity was abso- 
lute, and the favor infinite. 

One caution at this point. There is a loose way 
of talking, which, I fear, is spreading the idea that 
none but professed Christians experience the work 
of the Spirit. As well might it be said that conserva- 
tories and flower-gardens and well-tended fields are 
the only places on the face of the globe that feel the 
rays of the sun ; whereas the sun shines on all 
with impartial ray. The Spirit, like Christ, does not 
labor for the disciples alone. It is not alone to bring 

13 



290 THE ATONEMENT: 

forward these in holiness that he strives ; but the 
publicans and sinners, and those outside of the fa- 
vored circle, are recipients of his love and effort. 
The Spirit, it is true, is only in the regenerated heart ; 
but, nevertheless, he stands at the door of every heart 
beating among men. As the sun is on the ice, so is 
the Spirit on the impenitent heart, melting it. As 
the rain falls on the flower and bramble alike, so the 
gift of the Spirit is given to all ; this being the dif- 
ference, — that, while the flower converts the visita- 
tion into sweetness, the brier perverts it to the edging 
of all its many thorns. But as with Christ, so with 
the Spirit, the guilt of rejection implies an antecedent 
offer. Solicitation precedes refusal. None " grieve 
the Spirit" who have not felt the Spirit's approach. 
At the door of every conscience, whether of peni- 
tent or impenitent, the Spirit stands to-day, offering 
its aid, quickening, praying, commanding. If any 
of you hear a voice saying to you to-day, " Repent," 
" Believe ; " if any of you shall have longings for 
a nobler life rise up within you ; if any feel the up- 
braidings of a guilty conscience ; if any shall hear 
the words shaping themselves for your ear, "Now is 
the accepted time," — know this, that the Spirit is 
fulfilling his work upon your soul ; and act as one 
who stands at a most solemn moment in his earthly 
existence. 

Is there not something inexpressibly beautiful in 
the thought, that God's Spirit is imparted unto all ? 
The rock is hard ; but its hardness cannot prevent 
the warm beam from falling upon it. The heart may 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 291 

be hard ; but the Spirit's influence, shot like a ray from 
the orb of God's mercy, falls lovingly upon it, and no 
hardness can turn it back. There is something large 
and lavish in all divine operations. God is full and 
rich, and is not compelled to practise a cautious econo- 
my in the outgoing of his beneficence. He pours his 
largess down upon us as the spring rains are poured 
upon the earth, — upon rock and barren spot as truly 
as upon the fruitful soil. And in nothing is this pecu- 
liarity more beautifully illustrated than in the deal- 
ings of the Holy Spirit with us. Why should the 
Spirit be given at all? Was not Christ enough? 
Was not Calvary a sufficient demonstration of Heav- 
en's love for man ? Does it not suffice when a man 
lies clown and dies for his friend ? What love is this 
which supplements Calvary with the Spirit, and to 
the gift of a Saviour acids the gift of the Sanctifier ? 
What charity is like the charity of the skies ? what 
benevolence like that which opens the gates of mercy 
to the rebellious, and still prolongs its stay to guide 
them thither? 

The mission of the Spirit, then, is to incline the 
soul to accept the atonement as wrought out by 
Christ; and, after it has accomplished this, to develop 
the justified soul in Christian graces. To this end 
it uses many agents and agencies. By truth it en- 
lightens the mind, and convicts the conscience ; 
through providence it provides the occasions and 
provocations of thought : it shocks the paralyzed con- 
science into life, stimulates the reason, and puts a 
premium on the exercise of every noble faculty. 



292 THE ATONEMENT : 

Allow me to allude more fully to the use the Spirit 
makes of truth 

This is what Satan hates ; for it is his direct oppo- 
site. God is truth. Satan is a lie : in him lurk 
all the springs and sources of deceit. Falsehood is 
his child, and darkness his servant. His great object 
is to deceive men, — to make what is not appear as 
though it were, and what is as though it were not. 
The sinner is a deceived, a blinded man. * A wicked 
man, in old Saxon, meant a bewitched man, a person 
under the potent charm of an evil influence or spirit. 
Let us revive the old significance ; for in the epithet 
is a precise description. In sin, viewed from the level 
of corrected judgment, is no sense, no reasonableness. 
In this condition the Spirit finds man. He takes truth, 
and with it lights up the man's darkness. With 
truth he tears away the bandage of error from before 
the eyes. With truth he starts the conscience, which, 
like a long-checked pendulum, has hung in motionless 
poise ; and all the moral sensibilities, like exquisitely- 
wrought machinery, are set in motion, each faculty 
performing its office. With truth he frames the un- 
answerable argument which demonstrates that obedi- 
ence to God is our just and reasonable service, and 
urges home upon our conscience the duty of repent- 
ance. With truth he kindles remorse, which often, 
like a fire lighted amid corruption, burns to the puri- 
fication of the soul. With truth the Spirit unveils the 
face of God, and shows us the features of Divinity, — 
that face in which all nobleness abides ; but chiefest 
over all, giving fashion to the countenance, is love 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 293 

for man. This is the Spirit's work, and the use he 
makes of truth. 

My friends, I know not a greater crime than to 
resist the truth. He who crushes out a longing 1 after 
goodness, he who fights down a conviction of duty, 
he who resists the voice of conscience, he who 
persists in wickedness when virtue is made known 
to him, he who hesitates in doing what he knows 
he ought to do, acts not only against the universal 
sentiment of honesty and justice, but against the 
Spirit of the living God. I am not talking of 
truth in the abstract, of the truth of mathematics, or 
the truth of the sciences, but of that truth in thought, 
conscience, and feeling, which tells you what to do, 
and how to live ; to what to cleave, what avoid. Talk 
not of graves where sleep the dust of the departed ; 
tell me not of tears shed at the base of marble and 
granite shaft, nor speak of hours passed in mournful 
musing beneath the willow's shade. The graves where 
angels weep are in the hearts of men ; and darker 
than the shade of cypress are the shadows which rest 
above the spot where longings for a better life, and 
resolutions of duty, lie buried. 

If any of you have convictions, which, up to this 
lime left unattended to, ought now to be obeyed, 
obey them ; if any longings hitherto repressed, cage 
them no more, but, like birds too long detained from 
sun and native skies, let them have liberty. Say, " Fly, 
thought and hope, imagination, and all the winged 
faculties of my soul, — fly toward heaven, and bear 
tne on your wings ! " If any have felt the drawings 



294 THE ATONEMENT : 

of the Spirit, but have resisted ; if any, being re- 
buked, have hardened their hearts against the Spirit's 
voice ; if any, convinced, convicted, have halted be 
tween two opinions, — resist, delay, no longer ; yield. 
Even as a rebellious child, smitten by the grieved 
look of the mother's face, repents, and, weeping, flings 
its arms around her neck, saying, " Mother, forgive ! 
forgive me, my dear, patient mother ! " — so cry, and 
cast your arms around the neck of God to-day, and 
you shall be forgiven. 

The Spirit may therefore be regarded as represent- 
ing all those tendencies and influences which incline 
your soul to repentance toward sin, and faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Christ did no more surely die to 
purchase your pardon than the Spirit lives to persuade 
you to accept it. The love of the one for you is no 
more intense than the love of the other. The dignity 
and excellence of each are the same. In vain might 
the Spirit have existed if Christ had not died ; in 
vain Christ have died if the Spirit had not come to 
apply that death to man's redemption. If there is to 
us any spiritual understanding, Christians, any dis- 
cernment and apprehension of the truth, any correct 
knowledge of our own condition, it is entirely due to 
the operation of the Spirit in our souls. If in weak- 
ness and poverty any of you have ever been sus- 
tained, if in perils delivered, if when stricken with 
grief you have been comforted, it is due to the in- 
dwelling of the Spirit. If the future impends like a 
star-lit sky above 3^011 ; if life seems full of noble 
uses, and dying like the taking-on of a larger life, — ■ 



HOW ENEBGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 295 

then it is because the Spirit has taken of the things 
of God, and revealed them unto you. To me there 
is nothing in the whole range of pious reflection so 
lovely as the thought, that the power of God is in the 
hearts of all true believers, working out therein the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness. Passions are being 
subdued, habits corrected, the wicked vagaries of the 
mind checked, the imagination purified, and every 
faculty restored to its original state and use. All this 
under the direction of the Spirit. There is not a vir- 
tue not born of the Spirit ; not a noble impulse, nor 
a holy longing, of which the Spirit of God is not 
the direct parent. "What a spectacle it will be when 
the graces of all the sanctified, the ripened fruits 
of the Spirit, shall be grouped around their great 
Author in heaven ! 

Observe what liberties, what precious freedom, 
come with the Spirit. I have heard men talk as if, 
when man yielded himself to the control of the 
Spirit, he subjected himself to a form of bondage ; and 
even Christians, I fear, are slow to learn what is the 
liberty of the children of God. If it is bondage when 
eyes that have not seen are endowed with vision ; if it 
is slavery when the fetters of evil habits are stricken 
from the soul, and it is enabled to elect a nobler mode 
of action ; if it degrades the mind to have its igno- 
rance dispelled, its darkness illuminated, its grossness 
refined, — then does the coming of the Spirit bring 
bondage, and not otherwise. The Spirit never em- 
ploys force. He knocks before he enters any heart. 
He respects man's independence. He modifies con- 



296 THE ATONEMENT: 

duct through the inclinations. He can be resisted ; he 
can be grieved ; he can be driven away. When the 
soul accepts his guidance, it is by a free, an uncom- 
pelled act of self-surrender. 

Let us observe well to-day this fact, — a fact which 
must be accepted in its full force if one is to under- 
stand the nature of .the Spirit, or realize the guilt 
of rejection. The Spirit will never attempt the exer- 
tion of his omnipotent power. Against the citadel 
of your opposition he employs no weapons but 
those of love. He prevails, if at all, as a mother 
prevails, — by the strength of her affection. Solicita- 
tion and entreaty, counsel and reproof, warning and 
appeal, — these he will use, these he is now using, 
to bring you to accept the pardon of sin, and recon- 
ciliation with God through the Lord Jesus Christ ; 
but beyond this, my friend, neither now, nor at any 
future time, will the Spirit of God proceed. With 
you rests the decision. In your own mind are the 
forces that are to settle the question, and by your 
own free choice is the destiny of your eternal condi- 
tion to be fixed. 

Here, then, as jury on your own condition, jou sit 
to-day; and this is the question to decide: " Shall I 
become a Christian, or not?" Put the proposition 
clearly and plainly before your mind. Let the query 
come squarely up before the bar of your conscience. 
Settle, at least, one thing in the realm of morals 
to-day. The voice of the Spirit is calling to some 
of you. If the sound should come from heaven itself ; 
if the Holy Ghost should take shape of flesh and 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 297 

blood, and, standing revealed, should say, " Man 
of sins and infirmities, repent of your sins, and be 
braced with power," — the call would be no more 
direct, personal, and emphatic than it is to your soul 
in its secret musings and debates at this time. 

The Spirit uses many agencies, and operates along 
many lines of influence. Now reason, now memory, 
now affection, is used ; but more often yet, when the 
subject is intelligent, does he put the pressure of 
some strong conviction upon the soul. If any of you 
have, therefore, a conviction that you ought to become 
Christians, you can safely regard that as the particu- 
lar form in which the Spirit is now addressing }~ou. 
If your mind feels the pressure of this obligation ; if it 
is enlightened to such an extent as to apprehend duty ; 
above all, if you have found it hard to escape the feel- 
ing that now is the time for you to act, to decide this 
long-delayed matter, — I charge you to-daj r , that a 
grave and solemn period of your life has been reached. 
Such a conviction as this cannot safely be trifled 
with. You are in the most favorable position that an 
honest and sincere man can possibly be in. From 
where you stand to-day, the path of duty stretches 
broad and straight before you. You cannot mistake 
your position or your duty. The avenue that com- 
mences at the very point at which your feet now 
stand leads on and up until it terminates at the 
great white throne. A movement of your mind, 
the passing of a thought, a resolution, and you are a 
Christian, moving on in company with those who 
know no savior but their Lord, no master but their 

13* 



298 THE ATONEMENT: 

God. Advance, O men and women ! Fling doubt 
aside. Away with hesitation : to hesitate is sin. Ad- 
vance, I say, whither the Spirit, through your con- 
science, is inclining you. 

There is no graver sin in the world than to act 
against one's convictions. He who to-day shuts his 
eyes to the light deserves darkness to-morrow. There 
is but one star by which a person can safely steer : 
it is duty. Fade all other lights, sink all other orbs, 
extinguished be all other beams : let only this point 
of fixed fire remain, and it shall be as safe to sail in 
life's darkest midnight as if we moved amid the 
radiance of a thousand suns. But alas for the soul, 
that, seeing it, steers not invariably by it ! The waters 
that ingulf men are wide, cold, and deep : death 
looks up from their leaden depths in all its ghastly 
whiteness. Dense and impenetrable is the darkness 
around those who shut their eyes to the light ; wild 
and fierce are the currents against which men contend 
who neglect to do what their conscience tells them 
is right. I submit if this is not true even in the 
minor matters of purpose and life, — even in our treat- 
ment of men. Who, then, is able to give full expres- 
sion to its truth when applied to the question of 
eternity and our treatment of the Holy Ghost ? To 
stand in the presence of such considerations is enough 
to shock apathy itself into anxious thought, and cause 
even an idiot to look grave. For a soul to stand 
braced in stubborn indifference, when all the forces 
of love, mercy, and honor, urge it on ; for a man to 
hug the earth, when all the attraction of the skies is 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 299 

centred on hint ; when heaven, like a great moral 
magnet, is drawing him upward toward itself, — is a 
deed no one can do, unless he has been visited by 
and has resisted the Holy Ghost. This is the deed 
which no one can commit, save at long intervals ; 
which no one could commit often, and live ; and which 
committed once too many times, there remains for it, 
through all the kingdom of God, no more forgive- 
ness. It is that great, dark, unpardonable sin, that 
awful, defiant act of the soul, which digs a chasm 
betwixt it and reconciliation with God, which even the 
cross of a dying Saviour cannot bridge. But, breth- 
ren, we are persuaded better things of you, and 
things that accompany salvation, though we thus 
speak. You will not throw away the chance of a 
lifetime. You will not, in God's own house, reject 
the overtures of his love. You will not harden your 
hearts to-day, and be of the number of those, who, 
having ears hear not, and having eyes see not, the 
things that concern their salvation. Once more 
have you been granted an audience at the mercy-seat ; 
once more are the sandals and the robe and the ring 
brought forth for you. Will you wear them ? The 
Spirit stands waiting for your answer. Is he to be 
grieved again ? 

It may be that some of you hesitate because of the 
very greatness of your sins. If so, you err. I have 
striven in all my preaching here to give you true 
views of God ; to make you understand that his love 
is infinite, and that to forgive is his delight. May 
the Lord keep you from an unbelief begotten of a 



300 THE ATONEMENT: 

groundless despair ! Such despondency is unreasona- 
ble. Your Father in heaven is not one who is natu- 
rally averse to you, and must be won over by many 
arguments. He is not one who yields only to the force 
of entreaty. He loves you not as the result of your 
repentance. This is not God. For, all these years, 
God has been wishing to forgive you : he has searched 
for a reason to pardon you ; he has longed for an op- 
portunity to exhibit mercy. From the time when 
you began to sin, he has been studying to reclaim 
you. Through all the centuries of human history he 
has been seeking and saving the lost ; gathering all 
the poor, weak, and wretched to his arms. And his 
arms are not full yet : there is room for more ; there 
is room for you, friend ; there is room for us all. 

You must never try, my people, to put a human esti- 
mate upon God's nature, or upon that mercy to man 
which is the proper expression of it. His thoughts are 
not our thoughts, nor are his ways our ways. Neither 
men nor angels can gauge him. He is a marvel even 
to the heavens, — a marvel of love and condescension. 
The blessed spirits around him, who see him con- 
stantly, cannot understand him. They look at him, 
and wonder; they gaze and adore. Even we who 
have been saved by his love, we who are daily and 
hourly sustained by it, cannot understand it. We taste 
it ; we feed on it ; we are grown by it. But what do 
we know of the Almighty Being from whom it comes ? 
No more than the happy, sleepy-eyed babe on the 
mother's breast knows of the working of the mother's 
heart toward it, or the far-reaching thoughts of the 



HOW ENERGIZED, AND HOW RESISTED. 301 

mother's mind. The little thing can take of the moth- 
er's life ; but what does it know of the mother's life ? 
Compare the body, the mind, the soul, of the mother, 
with the body, mind, and soul of the child, and tell 
me how the child can understand the mother, the 
babe comprehend the woman. And so, as I picture 
it, is this divine love that holds us and bends over us. 
The whole race is only a babe in its arms. It feeds us ; 
it clothes us ; its breath and touch are on us ; when 
we are gathered to its heart, we are made warm and 
happy. But who in all the race can understand it? 
Not one. It is the mystery of God and of life, the 
wonder of the earth, and the marvel of eternity. 

And now, friends, listen to me. Before I close, I 
have a great truth to tell you, — a truth, I trust, you 
will never forget. This great, divine love is the love 
which is seeking and claiming you to-day for its own. 
Picture it to your minds : see it standing before you, 
its face aglow, its arms outstretched, its lips parting 
for speech. " My child," it says, " I have waited 
long for you. I thought you would relent. I knew 
you would repent at last. My patience has its re- 
ward. Come, my child, come. At last I have you in 
my arms." Is it true, friend? Have you, at last, 
put yourself into the arms of God ? 



SAB BATE MOBNING, FEB. 4, 1872. 



SERMON. 



TOPIC-SAVING THE LOST. 
The parable of the lost sheep. — Luke xv. 3-7. 

THE audience to which Christ delivered the para- 
ble that I have read you, and the two with 
which it stands in close conjunction, was a remarkable 
one. It is described in the following words of Luke : 
" Then drew near to him all the publicans and sin- 
ners for to hear him." "This," saj's Trench, "does 
not imply that at any particular moment, in a certain 
neighborhood, this class drew near to hear him ; but 
the evangelist is rather giving the prevailing feature 
of the whole of Christ's ministry, or at least of one 
epoch of it ; that it was such a ministry as to draw 
all the outcasts of the nation, the rejected of the 
scribes and Pharisees, around him ; that there was a 
secret attraction in his person and his word which 
drew all of them habitually to him for to hear him." 
He did not repel them, as many of his professed fol- 
lowers have and do the like classes of our day and 
generation. He did not fear pollution from their 
touch. He did not so mistrust his own goodness. He 

302 



SAVING THE LOST. 303 

did not feel so anxious as to what the purists of his 
time would say about it, that he dare not be seen 
talking with those whom he wished to better. He 
was, rather, so intrenched in his goodness, so per- 
vaded with the one desire to benefit them, that it 
never occurred to him that they would or could hurt 
him. He had come " to seek and to save the lost; " 
and here they were. It was to reach and benefit just 
such people that he left heaven. He greeted them 
graciously, therefore, instructed them, won upon 
their regard, and lived as a benefactor should on 
familiar terms with those whom the Pharisees called 
wretches. It was " wretches " that Christ came to 
save ; and he found them on every hand, no more 
and no less than any of you who profess his name 
can find in Boston to-day, if you will only go from 
house to house, and street to street, preaching in such 
a wise, winning way as Christ employed. What 
wonderful illustrations he used ! — how homely ! how 
apt ! how suggestive ! If they had gone to the syna- 
gogues, they could not have understood the scribes 
and the doctors of the law, mumbling over the tradi- 
tions and the creeds of the Jewish fathers ; and as 
for the Pharisees, they knew that they were hypo- 
crites, and enjoyed nothing better, doubtless, than to 
hear Christ stand up and tell them plainly to their 
faces what they were. But here was a young man 
that did not despise them and call them hard names, 
but gave them credit for all the good that was in 
them, and treated them like human beings, — almost 
as if they were his brethren ; who told them beau- 



304 SAVING THE LOST. 

tiful stories that always had a point to them, and set 
them thinking, and sometimes drew tears from their 
eyes : and he always closed with an entreaty for 
them to be good, or an expression of hope and en- 
couragement ; or else would tell them to ask of God 
any favor, and he would give it them. My friends, 
are you quite sure but that we must have done with 
all our relying on law to better men, and with bluster 
and denunciation, and copy more from the sweet gen- 
tleness of Christ, before the publicans and sinners of 
our age will gather to hear us gladly ? 

The sinner is set forth in the parable as a silly, 
wandering sheep. And it suggests what is true, — 
that sin is not always a matter of premeditation. Sin is 
oftentimes an ignorance, a misunderstanding, a dark- 
ness of mind. There is such a thing as being*; am- 
bushed morally ; of being unexpectedly set upon and 
captured before you have time to rally your powers 
of resistance. Men do not sit down and deliberately 
plan out evil, and pledge themselves to it. A young 
man does not at eighteen say, " Now I will waste my 
time and squander my money, ruin my health, and 
hurt as many by my influence as I can." That is not 
the way the thing is done. It would not be true to 
so represent it, any more than it would have been 
true for Christ to have represented the sheep as 
getting together in one corner of the fold, and saving, 
"Now let us get out and run off into the woods, and 
get bitten by wolves, and be killed." Neither sheep 
nor men act in that way. Men wander off; they get 
led astray ; they get farther away from virtue than 



SAVING THE LOST. 305 

they ever expected to be ; they are lost before they 
know it. Looking at him from one point of view, 
the sinner is to be condemned ; looking at him from 
another, he is to be pitied. In this latter light 
it is that the parable presents him to us. It is in 
this light that Jesus was continually looking at men. 
"I came not," he said, "to condemn the world, — 
that is not the object of my mission, — but that the 
world through me might be saved." 

My friends, let us catch the spirit of the Saviour as 
we go in and out among men. Let us settle upon some 
plan of conduct, some style of treatment. As a 
preacher, I have had to decide which is the most effi- 
cient, the most Christ-like way to approach men in pre- 
senting the gospel. Some think I have made a mistake ; 
that I do not threaten enough ; do not attempt to ter- 
rify enough ; do not preach the law and judgment as I 
ought. But, friends, I do not think that these critics 
are right. I cannot find any such roughness in Christ. 
He instructed men; he enlightened them. He touched 
their hearts by his all-including sympathy. He won 
their affection, and made his life a sacrifice for them. 
But he did not thunder and blaze away at them. He 
did not scold and threaten, and try to frighten them 
with horrible pictures of what would happen to them 
if they did not love him, and do as he told them to 
do. But he told them of God, and made them love 
him by showing how deeply and warmly he loved 
them. He educated the moral sense in their hearts, 
which is the sole parent of obligation. lie made the 
best feel they were not good enough, and the worst 



/ 

306 SAVING THE LOST. 

feel that they might be, and ought to be, better. 
And, to ray mind, much of the preaching that has 
been since, and much which has been printed and 
read by the churches, is simply shocking. It is no 
more like the Sermon on the Mount than a thunder- 
cloud is like sunshine, or a December tempest like a 
June day. The one is bitter and biting ; it smites 
and tears all the foliage away : but the other makes 
all the repressed juices to start, and the leaves to 
unfold themselves, and all the buds to flush in pink 
and red. The one strips : the other clothes the 
landscape in life and beauty. I think the man who 
preaches nearest to the sentiment of these parables I 
have read you, preaches nearest as Christ preached, 
and as he to-day wishes his servants to preach ; and 
all I ask or desire, as a preacher, is, that the spirit 
which pervades these words, and fills all this chapter 
as a spray of heliotrope fills a room with fragrance, 
may more and more fill my heart, and be yielded 
forth in all my words, when I talk to you of your 
sins, and your salvation therefrom through the mercy 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The lesson I wish you 
who are sabbath-school teachers and mission-school 
teachers, and you who are officers in this church, and 
all you who are in any sense co-laborers with me, to 
learn to-day, at this point, is, to copy more after Christ 
when you talk to men about moral duty and their 
souls' salvation. Men are like ice. You can melt 
them sooner by being warm toward them, by cen- 
tring the rays of a great, earnest, glowing love upon 
them, than by going at them with hammers of threat 



SAYING THE LOST. 607 

and warning, and trjing to beat them down and pul- 
verize them. Sandstone kind of men can be treated in 
that way ; but, when you hit a man in that style made 
of granite, the hammer recoils to the injury of the 
palm that held it. June is better than December to 
quicken life and growth in the natural world ; and, if 
you want people to blossom and get fruitful spiritu- 
ally, pour around them the warm, genial atmosphere 
of God's penetrative and stimulative love. 

The contrast, as you observe, in the parable, is 
not entirely perfect ; the antithesis is not exact. A 
sheep that wanders from the flock is not necessarily 
lost ; he is not irrecoverably gone. He may tire of 
his wanderings, and yearn for the companionship of 
the flock. This desire may prompt him to retrace his 
steps. His remembrance of the direction he took 
when he went astray may be sufficient to direct his 
return ; or by a happy fortune, mere luck, he may 
unexpectedly stumble upon the flock, and be guided 
safely again by the good shepherd's voice. And thus, 
as j'ou see, a sheep that has wandered may of him- 
self return to the flock, or by good fortune be deliv- 
ered from danger, and restored to safety. 

But, friends, this is not true of God's sheep. It is 
not true of men and women who wander from vir- 
tue. There is in sin a centrifugal tendency. The soul 
that starts from the centre of virtue is flung farther 
and farther away from it. Sin has no virtuous incli- 
nations : it is wicked in inception, and wicked in con- 
tinuance. A current can as well of its own power 
roll back upon itself as that sinfulness of its own 



308 SAVING THE LOST. 

volition can turn heavenward. The soul that is led 
astray by it is led farther and farther astray : it 
plunges deeper and deeper into the wilderness. The 
wolves that pursue are re-enforced at every gorge. 
Every chasm adds a fiercer mouth and a deadlier 
hate to the blood-thirsty pack. Hell, once on track 
of a man, gives him no time to think, no chance to 
turn. Its aim is capture ; and the end of its chase is 
death. If the lost soul is found, it must be because 
the shepherd goes out to find it ; if the wandering 
spirit is reclaimed to virtue, it must be because the 
searching love of God has gone out after it, and found 
it, and brought it back. 

My friend, I trust that you will not underrate the 
significance of these divine influences, and those di- 
vinely-appointed agents which are sent out in warn- 
ing and argument and entreaty to prevent you from 
farther wandering. Recognize reverently and gladly 
to-day their source and value. They are God's mes- 
sengers to bring you safely back to that innocence, to 
that rectitude, from which you may have wandered. 
Mj t voice, this holy day, the sanctuary, this worship- 
hour, — all represent the wish and will of Heaven 
for your conversion. They come to you as the voice 
of a father to his lost child in the night, who is run- 
ning wildly about he knows not whither, saying 
" This way, my son, this way : father is here ! " God 
is so calling to many of his sons in this house to-day. 
If there is an impenitent, a careless soul present, I 
would say to him, Every moment that you remain 
as you are, you are getting farther and farther from 



SAVING THE LOST. 309 

God and heaven and hope. You may not intend to 
be carried away ; you may think that you are not 
being; but you are. The law that works in you, 
that moulds your life, and directs it, is the law of evil 
influence, and accumulates itself momentarily. You 
are like a bird caught in the path of a gathering tor- 
nado. You are powerless to breast its increasing 
current of fierce violence. You are but a bunch of 
streaming feathers and quivering flesh, pitted against 
a power which uproots the oaks, and starts the very 
turf on the sides of the mountains. There are but 
two possible decisions for you to reach, — either yield 
to the wind, and be borne to death ; or mount with 
one bold push of purpose and nerve above the 
pitiless sweep of the tempest into the tranquil and 
unvexed spaces overhead. No man, no woman, can 
remain in the current of sin, and live. There is not 
a person of all you who are present, there is not a 
person in this city, or in the world, that can put him- 
self into the current of his sinfulness, in the whirl- 
ing and writhing and onrushing violence of it, and 
not be hurled and beaten down upon the adamant of 
God's justice, and killed. Do not believe those who 
tell you that sin can redeem itself: it never did it, 
and it never will do it. The wandering soul never 
wanders into heaven, never regains the fold it 
has wickedly left, by luck. No delay, no length of 
time, will bring you to it. You must jdeld yourself 
to the arms of the Shepherd, and let him carry you 
back, if you are ever to get back. Why not yield to- 
day ? Why not say, " Good Shepherd, take me in your 



310 SAVING THE LOST. 

arms, and carry me back whence I have strayed to-day. 
I am lost ; I am bewildered ; I have no confidence 
in myself. Do thy will with me. Only let me feel, 
before the sun sets to-night and I have time to wan- 
der farther, that the gates of thy love infold me, and 
the angels of thy care fence me from danger while I 
sleep " ? This is penitence ; this is conversion ; this 
is the very embodiment of salvation. 

My people, refresh your memories to-day with the 
real object of Christ's incarnation. He did not come 
to publish certain sublime truths. He did not come 
to found a church, to build up a religious hierar- 
chy, to introduce habits of prayer, and peculiar 
views of God -and duty. He came absorbed, rather, 
with one thought, — devoted to one sublime, un- 
selfish mission. It was to go after his lost sheep. 
This yearning, this irrepressible desire, it was 
which burned and glowed in his whole life, as the 
pure fire glows in the diamond. This it was which 
gave fervor and intense beauty to his life. He 
never took a step, he never made a motion, in the 
flesh, that was not in the direction and for the 
recovery of some lost one. He was continually turn- 
ing his ear to catch some cry ; continually straining 
his eye to find some flying, pursued form to succor 
and defend. As he declared with his own mouth, 
the very object of his coming was to seek and save 
that which was lost. Before Christ came, who cared 
for the lost? Who cares for the bleaching bone in 
the wilderness ? — it may be the bone of an ox, or a 
dog, or a man : who cares which ? It is a dry and life- 



SAYING THE LOST. 311 

less bone, and nothing more. It has no connection 
with our beating flesh, no relation with our living 
thought. Who cares for the shell on the shore ? 
The waves have heaved it up from the caverns of the 
deep, and ground it into the sand : there let it lie. 
What hunter cares for the scattered feathers which 
some fierce hawk has torn from the back and breast 
of its prey ? Why mourn over a bunch of soiled plu- 
mage ? Had the hunter seen the hawk pounce on it, 
he might, perchance, have shot the hawk, and spared 
the bird ; but the bird is lost. Why look ? why 
mouiti ? why care ? So little man cared for man be- 
fore Christ came. The life of Christ was wonderful, 
because it was full of deeds nobody else had ever 
done. His words were marvellous, because they were 
such as no one else had ever spoken. His veiy sym- 
pathies were a revelation. Xo other bosom had ever 
felt them. He took the world by surprise. He was 
original, unique; a puzzle and a problem to the best 
men of his day. Hypocrites deemed him a hypocrite 
like themselves, only acting with greater cunning. 
He was too good for the wicked to believe ; he was 
too good for the best to appreciate. His very disci- 
ples grew to understand him slowly and by degrees. 
They never did fully understand him until he was 
taken from them. They needed to be enlightened by 
the Spirit before they could apprehend whom and 
what they had had with them. It was only after the 
Spirit descended, quickening them, that they under- 
stood his mission, and began to be kindled and to burn 
with his own enthusiasm for souls. Then, and only 



312 SAVING THE LOST. 

then, it was that they started out, inspired with the 
spirit of their Master. 

My people, let us remember this. Let us file 
through the hard shell of creed and formula, until 
we come to the real kernel of our Christian life. 
Let us resist the wrapping and covering up in 
form and ceremony, in definition and pious habit, 
this primal, generic idea of our faith. It is easy to 
multiply dogma, easy to magnify the value of precise 
theological statement (and I do not say that such do 
not have their uses) ; but to my mind they are merely 
husks in which growth has incased the kernels, — 
merely moss which the ages have accumulated on the 
front of that chiselled rock on which our hopes are 
built. Strip away the husks, and fling them to the 
winds; but the corn, rich, nourishing, and golden, 
will appear. Scatter the moss, and there before your 
eye, without vestment or covering, bare, unscreened, 
as hewn from all eternity, stands the rock, Christ Je- 
sus, embodying this grand conception, and saying to 
all human-kind, " Come, ye shattered men ; come, ye 
women riven in your hopes of a purer womanhood ; 
build on me, who am the only sure foundation, and 
you shall stand in the day when the mountains them- 
selves shall fall." 

Let us all learn afresh to-day the lesson of Christ's 
life. Let us penetrate, I say, in thought, through the 
opposition of theological and formularistic strata, until 
we lay bare the primeval granite which underlies the 
entire gospel structure. Let us so carve this thought 
on the tablet of our memories, that the friction of time 



SAVING THE LOST. 313 

shall never erase it, — some of us as a matter of hope, 
some as a matter of guidance in our labors, — that 
Christ came "to seek and save the lost" This was 
the object of his incarnation ; this the sublime mo- 
tive which prompted him to take flesh. Ask him as 
he stands on the portico of the temple, beset with 
temptation, why he came ; and the voice which quiv- 
ers downward through the air is, " To save the lost." 
Ask him as he rises from his agonizing prayer in the 
garden, when a thicker darkness than subsequently 
draped the earth lies on his soul ; and he says again, 
" I came to save the lost." ' Ask him as he sinks 
fainting beneath the cross ; and amid his panting are 
shaped the selfsame words, — " To save the lost." 
Ask him as he hangs on the cross itself, about to 
yield up the ghost ; and his quivering lips reply, " I 
came to save the lost ; and here my task is finished." 
And if you should ask once again, — even as he was 
ascending, — down from the deepening glory, as he 
rises and as he disappears, descend the words, " I came 
to seek and save the lost." Not only to save, but to 
seek. Who here can measure this seeking love of God ? 
How many of us present can rejoice in it ? We were 
sought after ; we were discovered ; we were found. 
Many of us were far from Christ when he came out 
after us. We owe it to his seeking that we sit here 
in hope to-day. While we praise his saving, let us 
not forget his seeking love. 

Are there not some here who feel that Christ is 
seeking after them to-day ? Are there any who are 
foolishly and wickedly hiding themselves from his 

14 



314 SAVING THE LOST. 

seeking ? Is it credible that any here desire to be 
lost? any here, who, found of Christ, resist, and 
refuse to be lifted in his divine arms, and carried 
back to the fold ? I refuse to believe it. Such con- 
duct is not merely foolish, nor suicidal, nor base : it is 
all of these combined. I have no word for it. 

My friends, I have shown you Christ, and made 
you to see the object of his mission. You all see 
what it was ; and the object of Christ shows us 
what should be the object of the Christian. " The 
disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above 
his lord." What Christ lived for, we, who profess 
to have Christ in us, the hope of glory, must live for. 
The object, then, of the Christian's life, your object 
and mine, my brother and sister, is to save the lost. 
This object should be to all other objects of our lives 
what the firmament is to the stars : it includes them 
all. Is there a man sinking? — become to him what 
Christ was to Peter, — a savior. Is that man by 
your side blind ? — touch with the fingers of a Christ- 
like influence his sightless orbs, that he may see. 
Are these thousands around you hungry and faint? 
— cause them to sit, then, while you break and dis- 
tribute the bread of your bounty among them. Are 
there publicans and sinners in Boston, men and wo- 
men despised, dangerous, mean, and wicked ? — then 
go and speak some parable like this of the lost sheep 
unto them. Is there some sinful woman, whom a pub- 
lic opinion, seeking only to stone her, drags into your 
presence for judgment? — then (I speak not as a 
man : I speak with Christ standing back of me, and 



SAYING THE LOST. 315 

telling me to say it), — then do as Christ did. Say to 
her, " Go and sin no more." Do you think that one 
silly or wicked lamb has wandered from the fold, and is 
to-day in the wilderness of human life, lost ? — go out, 
then, inspired with the seeking love of God ; search 
far and near — street, ally, and brothel — until you 
find that soul, and bring it back. Give to Christ a sec- 
ond incarnation in your own person; and let the same 
sublime purpose, born of no parent less noble than 
the mercy of God, which breathed in all the words 
and acts of Christ, animate you. 

The passage says that he sought his own until 
he found it. 

My friends, have you never marvelled at the per- 
severance of God? Do you not k%)w of souls, per- 
haps your own among the number, for whom Christ 
sought years before he found ? Messenger after mes- 
senger was sent out ; but you evaded them. You 
loved to wander and roam ; j~ou delighted in sinful 
independence ; you hid yourself away from him. The 
starving child fled from the loaf ; the pilgrim, dying 
of thirst, avoided the spring. But divine love perse- 
vered. Mercy had been sent out to seek ; and seek it 
did. It followed you in all your devious windings ; 
through the thickets' and into the chasms of your 
experience it pursued ; and at last, when hope itself 
had given up in despair, it found you, — found, and 
brought you home. We are like vases of rare tint 
and exquisite workmanship, which, shattered by some 
violent stroke, have been regathered in all their frag- 
ments, and so carefully re-joined, and glued with 



316 SAYING THE LOST. 

transparent cement, that no eye can detect where 
were the lines of rupture. The seeking love of God 
found us in fragments, and made us over into a perfect 
whole. If any of you have children or friends or 
relatives far away from God, widely wandering from 
the truth of statement and life, I trust you will not 
be discouraged. Hope and pray always. Die as you 
have lived, hoping and praying. Build your hope on 
the seeking love of Christ. Remember that his whole 
heart, all his energies, are expended in seeking and 
saving the lost. Ally your life with his in this work ; 
help reform society ; help reform the Church, so that 
people shall not stare and look astonished when a really 
bad man or wicked woman is saved ; when a soul that 
has in very fact fcteen lost, and which was found in its 
sins as a lamb found in some dark, stony gorge, nearly 
dead from exposure and wounds, is brought to the fold. 
Help reform the pulpit, until the under-shepherds of 
Christ, when proclaiming the gospel, shall go forth on 
their beneficent errands, provided only with peaceful 
crook and tuneful pipe, and not armed with clubs of 
theological controversy with which to surround a 
crowd of wanderers, and drive them by main force into 
the fold. It is the seeking, and not the driving love 
of God, that you are to imitate. You are not to treat 
publicans and sinners as Christ did the Pharisees, and 
say, " Woe unto you ! " If you come across a Phari- 
see, a real long-faced hypocrite, a man who believes 
in perfection, and acts as if possessed with the Devil, 
say " Woe " to him, or any thing else you please, and 
feel that you have the gospel sanction on the utter- 






SAYING THE LOST. 317 

ance : but to the Thomases weak of faith, to the hot- 
headed Peters, to the man who casts out devils with- 
out nominally confessing Christ, to the publicans and 
sinners, to the ignorant and erring of this generation, 
say not " Woe ! " for you have no sanction of Christ to 
do it. Go where these classes are ; get them around 
you, and make a parable to them rather, as this about 
the lost sheep, or that of the lost piece of money, or 
that of the prodigal son ; and let the spirit of your 
words be, not that of denunciation, but of hope, in- 
struction, and encouragement. Say unto them, " Ask, 
and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, 
and it shall be opened." 

At this point, and in close connection with what I 
am saying, is another suggestion, derived from the 
story of the parable. After the shepherd had found 
the lost sheep, he is represented as " laying it on his 
shoulders." How tenderly the good shepherd is rep- 
resented as acting toward the sheep that had caused 
him such anxiety, and cost him so much toil and 
trouble ! He does not chastise it ; he does not chide 
and threaten ; he does not even drive it with re- 
proaches back to the fold. He does not say to a ser- 
vant, " Here, take it up, and carry the silly thing 
back." No : he stoops his own shoulder to it, and 
with his own strength carries it to the fold. Here, 
my people, you see the sustaining love of Christ. 
His seeking love is not more wonderful in its efforts 
to find us than is his supporting love to uphold us 
after we are found. The highest form of persever- 
ance is love. It is stronger than hate ; for the grave 



318 SAVING THE LOST. 

ends that : but love lives, and weeps above the grave, 
powerful, intense, as ever. And if there is a single 
soul in divine presence at this moment whom the Sa- 
viour has found by his long-searching mercy ; a man 
or woman who lies in moral weakness and prostration ; 
one who longs to be in the fold of God, but is un- 
able to arise and go of himself, — believe me, friend, 
Christ, the great Shepherd, himself stoops to take you 
up. Yield yourself to his arms ; say, " Here I am, 
lost, sin-bitten, helpless. I know not where the 
fold is, or how to get there. O Saviour ! carry me ; 
take me just as I am : do not leave me another night ; 
carry me to thy fold!" Say this; say it in j^our 
heart ; say it now, just as you are ; and He who bore 
all our sins will bear you, and you shall find the fold 
even as you yield yourself to his arms ; for the arms 
of Christ are the fold of God. 

My people, I choose my themes, when I am to 
teach you from this place, deliberately. I am as one 
driven for time ; who cannot tell his story in full, and 
so selects what seems the most essential for the un- 
derstanding of the message intrusted to him. The 
time will come when I shall not teach you. What 
thoughts I have of God will stay at home, and go not 
out into the great thoroughfare along which the 
forceful energies of the human mind march in stately 
columns, seen and felt of all. What views may come 
to me of the divine nature, what impulses may be im- 
parted, will matter little then to 3 7 ou. But now you 
hear me, and my thoughts are your thoughts ; for I 



SAVING THE LOST. 319 

give them freely, and hold nothing back. You know 
my faith ; for I have often told you of it. I hold that 
all things in this world work together for good to 
those that believe ; that underneath all our hopes 
and fears and impulses and experiences, as a pilot 
beneath the swelling of a hundred sails, stands God, 
with his hand upon the helm. It is he that is steer- 
ing us, and not we ourselves. I hold that the Chris- 
tian should look at death with a face as bright and 
cheerful as sunrise when it meets the darkness of 
night, irradiating what it faces. I hold, with stead- 
fastness of thought, that every man and woman 
should stand upon this earth as a bird upon a swaying 
perch, from which, when shaken by the passing gust, 
she flies away, finding both her largest opportunity 
and her highest joy in flight. This is my faith : and, 
if j'ou ask its source, I say it is born of a clear intel- 
lectual apprehension ; a firm, abiding confidence in 
the saving love of God, — that divine, indescribable, 
inexhaustible love that lives and yearns in God's 
heart for man. I say it is indescribable: for I know 
of no love with which to compare it. I know by 
observation the strength and gravity of a fathers 
love ; how it will toil and bear, and make sixt}^ years 
of life the fulfilment of one wish, — that over his grave 
his son may mount to something higher and wider 
than his father knew. I know the patience, the ten- 
derness, the hovering, brooding quality, of a mother's 
love, which seeks to nestle and screen from every 
passing harm the objects of her care. I know, too, 
of that other love which woman bears for man, at the 



320 SAYING THE LOST. 

v Dice and beck of which father and mother are left, 
and she goes forth, as an angel following after God, 
with him whom her soul loveth. This, too, is inde- 
scribable. It is eternal also. Its voice is music 
here ; it makes the melody of home ; and I know that 
it is strong enough to send its cry beyond the inter- 
val of death, and wake the echoes of the eternal 
world. But over and above all these, including 
them all as minor parts of itself, stands the divine 
love for man. And now, if any of you feel that you 
would take of this love, either in the way of pardon 
or sanctification, take ye freely of it. Take it freely, 
I say, as the earth in summer takes the sunshine, as 
the nostrils of bird and beast and man take of the 
air ; for, like the sunshine, it is on you all, and it is 
poured over you all as the air is poured about the 
earth. 



SABBATH MORNING, FEB. 18, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT,- IMPROVEMENT OF SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 

" And, while they went to buy, the bridegroom came ; and they 
that were ready went in with him to the marriage; and the 

DOOR WAS SHUT."— Matt. XXV. 10. 

THE lesson taught in this passage is, that, what- 
ever good opportunity comes to man, he should 
instantly improve it ; that, when some fortunate oc- 
casion solicits action, he should act, and act, too, 
on the instant ; and that he who fails so to act loses 
forever the blessings he might have obtained. This 
is the gist of the passage ; and my desire and hope 
are, so to unfold and apply this subject that you may 
one and all feel in full force the pressure of the obli- 
gation. 

The first is, that he who desires to change his 
course of life, to rectify his example, to reform his 
conduct, should do so at once. 

There are questions upon which we should delib- 
erate long and earnestly, and, even after a decision 
has been reached, enter upon the performance cau- 
tiously ; but there are other questions which do not 
relate to the judgment or the deliberative faculties, 

14* 321 



322 IMPEOVEMENT OF 

but rather to the conscience and the moral faculties, 
and concerning which the decision should be upon 
the instant, and the concordant act follow at once. 
There are things which must be done, if they are to 
be done at all, when the nature is at white-heat. 
There are acts born of the slow operation of the 
understanding, when conviction of duty waits on 
processes of thought and elaborate investigation : and 
there are other acts which are not offspring of the 
understanding, are not born of analysis, but are 
children of the emotions ; and as Minerva leaped full- 
armed from the brain of Jupiter, so these spring forth 
from the moral sensibilities, armed and equipped for 
action. There are decisions which lose by debate, — 
deliberation emasculates them, — and to which delay 
is death. Those people who think every thing must 
be done in cool blood; who think that deliberation 
lends dignity to the step ; who think that man can 
take no stand unless he meditates upon it, and re- 
volves it in his mind for six months, — such peo- 
ple are greatly mistaken : such people forget what 
I would call the volcanic element in man, — the 
enthusiastic and passionate element, which swells 
and rises in him at times, impelled by some unknown 
magnetic law, until, with the flame and fervor of an 
irresistible impulse to which is neither limit nor law 
save such as is born of itself, it overflows all the 
ordinary habits of his life, and illuminates his entire 
nature from base to summit. Poets give one name 
to it, philosophers another: Christ called it being 
" born again ; " and Paul, delineating its later mani- 



SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 323 

festations, described it as " being filled with the 
Spirit." Call it whatever you severally please, you 
all know what I mean, and to what I refer. I refer 
to that keen conviction which pierceth to the joints 
and marrow of a man's spiritual organism ; to that 
overflowing of the emotions, that rush of the affec- 
tions toward God, which comes forth from a stony 
heart as the water leaped from the rock when Moses 
smote it with his staff; that sublimating of the hopes 
and desires that have been sordid and base, which 
makes a person a marvel to himself, and an undenia- 
ble witness to the power of God. You know that the 
noblest exhibitions of your own lives, and the sub- 
limest acts of man as recorded in history, have been 
born of this moral enthusiasm ; born in an instant ; 
born, not of the judgment, but of the emotion, when 
you were caught up out of yourself, as it were, even 
as water is scooped from the surface of a lake by the 
uplifting suction of a whirlwind, and blown upward 
into the air, where it is no longer water, but a colum- 
nar rainbow or a sea of crimson mist. So ever and 
anon, down through the history of the race, some 
man, or class of men, has been blown upon of God, 
and inspired, and made the centre of his uplifting 
power, and lifted spiritually above the earth into the 
clear sunlight of an exalted purpose, and been trans- 
figured by it. Now, I say, when a man is so caught 
up toward heaven ; when God has put the arms of a 
mighty conviction around him, and lifted him out 
of the pit of his sordidness, upon whose crumbling 
edge no foot can pause an instant and not slip back- 



324 IMPROVEMENT OF 

ward, — that person must not hesitate ; he must not 
stop to debate : he must run, run for his life, if he 
would not slip, and tumble again into the very pit 
from which the hand of the Almighty has rescued 
him. If a miserly man, for instance, is touched with 
the divine sentiment of humanity ; if, through the 
voice of a living preacher, some benevolent cause has 
put its claim before him in such a light that his 
heart is melted, and an impulse to give, and to give 
freely, has risen up within him, — let him not hesitate ; 
let him not delay : let him put his name and amount 
down at once. That moment is the only gateway 
through which performance, large in stature as 
Heaven's requirement, can pass. At that moment 
he is warmed up to the act ; the claims of God are 
vividly before his eyes ; conscience is alive ; the fin- 
gers of his sordidness are for the moment paralyzed ; 
he is free from his old bondage to Mammon. For a 
moment he can act generously. Let him do it, or his 
old meanness will re-assert its sway over him, and 
master him. This is the way the human mind acts. 
Granted that it has lived on a certain level : it is capa- 
ble of great deeds only at intervals ; and, until such 
an interval is improved, it will remain on its habitual 
level, and under the operation of laws that serve to 
prevent its improvement. This, then, is the truth I 
urge upon you to-day. If any of you are convicted of 
duty touching your relation to God and the Church ; 
if any of you are so pressed upon of God, that you 
find it hard to remain where you are, and are com- 
pelled to brace yourselves, lest you be swept all of 



SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 325 

a sudden, as it were, onward to an open and public 
confession ; if any of you feel that morally, as fathers 
and mothers, as husbands and wives, as individuals 
before God, you have come to a crisis in your lives, 
and must, in your own minds, make a positive decis- 
ion for or against religion, — I warn you that your 
course is suicidal. You are rebelling not onl} r against 
God, but against the laws of your own mind. You 
are ignoring the plainest connection between motives 
and acts. You should not debate the matter a mo- 
ment. You should not delay an instant. You 
should rise, and say, " Lord, here I am : take me and 
use me." 

The chances now are all in your favor. The bal- 
ances incline perceptibly to your side of the scale. 
You have reached the very borders of the stream. All 
your energies are gathered for the leap. Your pastor 
is present to give you the word, and God himself 
ready to help. Now is the time for you to jump. 
Delay will change the conditions against you. The 
stream will widen with years, the current grow 
deeper and darker, your mind lose its courage, the 
voice best calculated to give you the word pass away 
into the silence of distance or of death, and you will 
be, in the closing hour of your life, on the wrong side 
of the stream. My friend, believe me, " now is your 
accepted time ; now is your hour of salvation." 

Again : I ask you to observe that the character of 
a person's past life may be such, — and in the case 
of nearly all of us it doubtless is such, — that sudden, 
instantaneous action is his only salvation. 



326 IMPROVEMENT OF 

There are two classes of sins. The one may be 
called sins of the perceptive faculties ; sins of error ; 
sins of ignorance ; sins of prejudice ; sins from 
which man cannot be delivered at once, unless, as 
in the case of Paul, God breaks over his ordinary 
methods of procedure, and condenses what is the 
result of years of ordinary life into the experience 
of a few days or hours. In many points, our con- 
version is slow. Our reformation waits on education 
and the leisurely growth of our understanding. 
There are sins so minute, so far off, so mingled and 
shaded into the very atmosphere of our life, that, as 
in the case of the eye distinguishing distant objects 
at sea, the conscience beholds them only after long 
practice ; only when, after long exercise, its powers 
have been trained up to the maximum of capacity. 
This is one class of sins ; and from such we are de- 
livered slowly, and only as we "grow in knowledge 
and grace." 

But there is another class of sins, — sins of the 
passions, of habit, of appetite, of indulgence of 
the animal instincts, — from which deliverance comes, 
if at all, through a decisive, instantaneous act of the 
will. The fly is wise in its instinct when it seeks 
with buzzing and violence to break suddenly away 
from the spider's web in which it finds itself unex- 
pectedly entangled. It must break out, or die. And 
that person who finds himself or herself caught in 
the meshes of some temptation that the Devil has 
spun, and skilfully suspended in his path ; who finds 
himself webbed in with wicked desires, and his mind 



SPIEITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 327 

being rapidly swathed in sinful thoughts, — such a 
person, I say, must learn a lesson from the entrapped 
fly, and burst peremptorily away from the encircling 
danger. In such a case, reflection is death. A 
month, a week, a single hour even, wasted in de- 
bate, and his freedom is lost. There are diseases — 
such as weakness of the organs, taints of blood, bro- 
ken bones, dislocated limbs — which only time, acting 
in conjunction with other remedial agents, can cure. 
But, as you all know, now and then there is gene- 
rated in the human body such a foreign substance, 
prolific of such antagonisms to the person's life, that 
the surgeon's knife must be called in to deal with it. 
Nothing short of excision will answer, and that, too, 
at once. The delay of a month, a week, perhaps an 
hour, would take even the possibility of recovery 
from the patient. It is precisely so morally. There 
are diseases in man's moral structure, taints from an 
ancestral blood, hereditary weaknesses, dislocated 
faculties, which time and the grace of God both can 
alone remove : we must wait with what patience 
we may command, until the operation of the Spirit 
shall purge us free of them. But, on the other 
hand, a spiritual disorder is occasionally developed 
in us, so swift and deadly in its action, so infectious, 
and prolific of further disturbance, that whoever 
would save his soul must deliver himself from it at 
once. If any of you recognize the analysis as cor- 
rect ; if any of you see in it a personal application ; 
if any of you feel like saying to yourself, " Good 
God, that is my case ! " — I tell you, friend, I have 



328 IMPROVEMENT OF 

mapped out the only plan that will save your life. 
If any of you feel that the fires of unlawful passion 
have been kindled in you, or if an appetite for in- 
toxicating drinks is already so advanced that its crav- 
ing is beginning to be felt, you ought to understand 
that the time for you to deliberate is past, and the 
hour for you to act is come. It is now, and before 
the benediction is pronounced upon you at the close 
of this service, that you who drink wine and ale, 
and. love to drink them, ought to be total-abstinence 
men. You are the very men who cannot be moderate 
drinkers. When a man begins to love liquor, then 
it is that he should stop entirely. The time to put 
out a fire is the instant when it shows itself. I saw the 
Adelphi Theatre burn the last winter. I stood within 
twenty feet of the doorway, and saw the sea of fire 
roll and surge within. How it roared and eddied 
and flared ! The walls stood, and within was one 
seething whirlwind of flame. There were six engines 
playing at their fullest pressure at once ; and the 
water was forced through the hose in streams that 
tore the slating from the roof, and started the bricks 
along the edges of the walls. I never before saw 
water driven through the air with such violence. 
Yet that torrent of water made no impression what- 
ever on the flames : they only flared the higher. 
The gale was roaring over the top of the walls ; and 
the suction upward was such, that I saw the solid 
streams from the hose, the moment they passed with- 
in the line of bricks, fringe out. The thin spray was 
actually lifted upward, and borne away upon the cur- 



SPIEITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 329 

rent of flame. No human power, no effort of man, 
could stop that conflagration. The building was 
doomed. Yet there was a time, an hour before, 
when a child's hand and a single basin of water would 
have saved that building. It is just so, friends, 
with man, touching his appetites and his passions. 
He must not allow them to gather headway, and 
flame up in him : he must smother them in the ear- 
lier stages of their manifestation, before they have 
begun to rage. You can manage a fire ; but you 
cannot a conflagration. 

There is an appalling amount of carelessness in 
these matters. Indulgence is made a fine art ; and 
men study and experiment how much they can stand, 
and keep their respectability. The line is drawn 
mighty fine in some cases too ! It must needs be a 
pretty sharp-pointed pencil that would trace a dis- 
tinction between gluttony and " generous living," 
between drunkenness and " moderate drinking," be- 
tween speculation and gambling. 

The only safe way touching this class of sins is to 
break short off. Not one man in a thousand can 
sin moderately on the lower, the animal side of his 
nature. He can sin in his intellect, and keep his 
balance ; but few men indeed can sin in their pas- 
sions and in their appetites, and not be swept away. 
That person who allows grossness to get the mastery 
over him ; who lives chiefly in his sensations ; whose 
instincts have become debauched, so that, voluntarily 
and involuntarily, he desires wickedness, — that man 
is lost. You might as well strive to re-gather the 



330 IMPROVEMENT OP 

fragrance of a flower from the ashes into which it has 
been burnt as to re-form virtue from the ashes and 
cinders of his reputation. 

Once more I remark, that we owe something more 
to man and God than change : we owe confession 
and reparation. When a man has been doing wrong ; 
when, through a long series of years, he has been liv- 
ing contrary to the will of God ; when he has, for the 
best half of his life, thrown the influence of his ex- 
ample against religion as applied to individual experi- 
ence, — he owes to his own soul, to society, and to 
God, something more than reformation. He should 
make a public confession of his wrong conduct. He 
should come out frankly, and say, " I wish all of 
you business-men who have known me, all you who 
are my clerks, and all you who have been my com- 
panions, to know that I have not been living as a man 
should live in a Christian land ; I have not acted as a 
man with gospel privileges should act ; and I desire 
that all of you should know that I have repented of 
my wrong conduct, and begun to live a new and 
better life." When a man says that, he honors God, 
takes a great burden off his own conscience, and 
makes his example right before men. He has done a 
vast deal more than reform his own life : he has set 
influences in motion which are calculated to reform 
other men's lives. He has become a preacher of sal- 
vation in the best possible way, — even by complying 
with the terms of salvation himself. He has repented, 
and been baptized : and his baptism is, before men, 
the best evidence of his sincerity and earnestness ; for 



SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 331 

all his acquaintances know that he never would have 
taken that step if he had not been thoroughly wrought 
upon and affected. The}' hear that Mr. So or So has 
joined the church ; and the}' whisper it around among 
themselves ; and they say, " Well, well, there must be 
something in religion, after all, or he never would have 
done what he has done." The rumor spreads from 
store to store. His old friends speak of it as they 
meet on the streets or in the cars : a few treat it as a 
joke ; but most mention it soberly and reverently. 
That man's confession has given the Holy Ghost a 
foothold in a hundred hearts. You see how it works, 
friends, and that a person has no right to keep as a 
secret what the honor of God and the welfare of men 
demand should be made public. If a worn-out, dys- 
peptic, and consumptive man goes into the Adiron- 
dacks, and the climate agrees with him, his cough 
disappears, and his lost appetite comes back with a 
vengeance, until he ears like an Indian, and is amazed 
at his own performances in that line, and spends the 
time between meals wondering how he can hold so 
much, and the whole camp feel just as he does about 
it, and after two months he comes out thirty pounds 
heavier than when he went in, his face swarth, his 
blood pure as old wine, his eye clear and bright, and 
his whole body filled with the divine buoyancy of 
health, — if such a man comes out of the woods, and 
says to himself just before he reaches home, " Now, I 
don't think I will say any tiling about this matter ; I 
am wonderfully changed, it is true ; but I don't think 
I had better say much about it ; it don't concern any- 



332 IMPROVEMENT OF 

body but myself; " and so, when he meets a business- 
friend on the street the next morning, who hails him, 
" Well, well, I never saw such a change in my life ; 
I scarcely knew you ; how much better you look ! " 
and he says, while he draws down his face, and lays 
his hand on his chest, and tries as hard as he can to 
cough, " Well, I don't know but I may be a little bet- 
ter : I suppose I do look better if you say I do ; but I 
am badly off, very badly off indeed, sir," — what 
would you think of such a man ? What name would 
you give to his conduct ? Is there any thing frank or 
honorable about it ? How ungrateful, how dishonest, 
it is ! What, then, shall we say of that man who has 
been blessed with the gospel all his life, whose mind 
has been instructed out of it, whose soul has been 
healed of its weaknesses and diseases, whose whole 
spiritual nature has been renovated and purified, and 
who even hopes that his sins have. been forgiven by 
the blood of Christ, — what must we think of that man, 
when he conceals the blessed change that has come 
over his mind, and neither honors God nor benefits 
men by telling them how much he has been helped 
and improved ? 

And so I say to you who have of late begun to live 
more correctly, who have been greatly blessed by the 
ministrations of the gospel, and who are secretly 
cherishing a hope, Make public confession of what- 
ever God has done for you ; tell men of the change 
that has come over you ; and let the influence of your 
reformation, and all the moral effect of it, be felt in 
your family, in the church, and on the world at large. 



SPIRITUAL OPPORTUKLTIES. 333 

Unpublished reformation, a hope in Christ cherished 
in reticence and secrecy, is like an eagle to whose body 
nature has added no growth of wings : it is denied 
the powers, privileges, and pleasures which belong to 
its nature, needed for its support, and demanded by 
its opportunities. 

And now, before I close, — and I close with the 
heaviness upon me that all I have said may have 
been spoken in vain, — let me speak to you of the 
exceeding sinfulness of sin. Oh, how it eats into 
man like a cancer ! How it blinds his eyes ! How 
it stops his ears ! How it undermines his virtue ! 
How it blasts and withers all the grace and ornament 
of his manhood ! How it takes the veiy grace and 
ribbon of his life, and makes it to be like a soiled and 
unseemly rag ! It is a terrible thing to be a sinner even 
for a moment, — even to the least extent. But what 
shall I say in description of a life of sin, of long years 
spent in transgression, of those enormous crimes, of 
those flagrant commissions, against the Decalogue, 
of those ocean-like and bottomless depravities upon 
whose upheavings thousands are being wrecked, and 
whose depths are white with the ghastly evidences of 
moral overthrow ? Warehouses and mansions can be 
rebuilt ; ships may be lost, and yet the sea remain 
white with sails ; the skill and energy of man can make 
good material overthrown, — yea, above the charred 
and blackened ruins, erect a larger and more imposing 
structure: but who can regain his soul when lost? 
who lift into their old places the prostrate columns 
of his fallen nature ? who re-gather, and form anew, 



334 IMPROVEMENT OF 

the fragments of his shattered virtue ? Xo one. This 
is the work of God. and not of man. If any of you 
are to be restored ; if the marks that sin has made 
upon you are ever to be removed, and the long-lost 
beauty of holiness come back to your soul, — the 
health-imparting touch of Christ must be felt upon 
you. At least the hem of his garment must sway 
against you, or you will never be healed. 

I hope none of you will get the idea that it is a 
little thing to repent. It is no slight work to break 
up fallow ground. When you hitch three stout pairs 
of oxen ahead of a plough that sinks a furrow twenty 
inches in depth into the hard, stony, unpulverized 
soil, how the roots, that make a lace-work of opposi- 
tion under the sward, snap ! How the stones heave up 
under the beam ! How the old stumps and snags crash 
as the teamster cracks his whip, and puts the whole 
strength of his team in a steady strain upon the chain ! 
That is what I call a revolution in the soil, — a kind 
of civil war among the roots. And when the field 
is ploughed, and the farmer casts his eye over it, and 
what a wilderness of roots and stumps and stones 
he has turned up, he wipes his face, and says, " That 
is what I call thorough work." Yes: it is thorough 
work. And when the Spirit of God has entered the 
point of conviction into the very subsoil of a man's 
sinfulness, and the work of repentance is begun, 
what a mesh-work of evil desires lurking beneath 
the swarded surface of his life is revealed ! What 
stony insensibilities are rooted out of him ! What 
deeply-bedded and snaggy habits are torn out ! 



SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 335 

What stump-like transgressions are overturned ! 
And, when he has made a clean breast of it, wiping 
the tears from his eyes, and looking over the field of 
his confessed sins, he says, " I had no idea that the 
record of my life looked like that ; I had no idea 
that there was such a mass of sin in me as that ; I 
had no idea that there was any such amount of buried 
and concealed opposition to God in me as I see thrown 
up and lying exposed before me." 

Nor had he. Satan's great object is, not to let 
men see how wicked they are. Every death-bed has a 
revelation, — to the impenitent, a revelation of horror 
and surprise. They never saw sin in its true light 
until then ; they never realized how unfit they were 
to meet God. You might as well expect a pawn- 
broker to tell you the true value of a jewel as to 
expect that the Devil will give you the true estimate 
of a holy character. 

And now I will tell you what is the result of my 
observation. Men do not differ greatly in their moral 
nature. In all are the same sinful inclinations, the 
same liability to err, the same temptations to wicked 
indulgence. Every sprout from the old stock has 
the same poisonous sap in it. Every twig naturally 
terminates in a thorn. " We are all gone out of the 
way : there is none that doeth good ; no, not one." 
Where men differ is in their willingness to recover 
themselves from their evil courses ; and if you would 
weigh men and women accurately, if you would 
discern between the good and the base, observe how 
they act after transgression. We are all liable to sin ; 



336 SPIRITUAL OPPORTUNITIES. 

but he who is noble, who has any of the divine leaven 
in him, is quick to repent of his sin. And when 
a person has erred, when he has transgressed, I care 
not how grievously, and p I see him making efforts to 
recover himself, and hear him say, " Yes, I have 
sinned; I have transgressed; I have been doing wrong 
all my life ; but here I take my stand, and with God's 
help I mean to live as I ought to live ; " when I hear 
him exclaim, "No more transgression for me, no more 
unlawful indulgence of passions, no more living down 
there on the low level of appetite ; henceforth I wed 
myself to virtue," — I say, friends, when you hear a 
person saying that, look well at him ; for before you 
you behold a man. 

And now, friends and strangers, the mercy of God 
is present in this house, and the hour of your death 
is not far off. The pages of your lives are blotted 
with the record of transgressions numberless, and 
your natures are full of iniquities. The time for you 
to repent is come. Repent, then, all of you, and 
change the course of your lives, or the evil will come 
upon you when you wot not, and the summons will 
be sounded when you are not prepared. Behold, the 
voice of the Bridegroom can be heard in our streets, 
and his cry has entered into your hearts. Rise up, 
then, all of you, and trim your lamps, and enter in 
with him to the feast, or else the door will be shut, 
and you will stand without, and fill the whole world 
with the wailing of your cries. 



SABBATH MORNING, FEB. 25, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT.-KINDLY AFFECTIONS THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 

" Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly 
love." — Rom. xii. 10. 

THIS is one of those sentences which bring out 
in the plainest possible light the beautiful 
character of Christianity. The object of Christ's 
teaching and life was to unite men in the bonds 
of human impulse ; to beget and foster amiable tem- 
pers in the human heart ; to implant such principles 
in the souls of men, that at last all men should be 
united in an actual brotherhood. Up to his coming, 
men had stood apart each from the other : selfish- 
ness had made them divergent. Ambition bred an- 
tagonisms ; and the world grew fuller of wickedness 
and bloodshed as the years advanced. Even religion 
seemed to engender hostility, and the altars of every 
god smoked with the offering of human blood. 

It was left for the Christian religion to inaugurate a 
new era. By precept and example, Christ set himself 
squarely against the old state of things. To justice 
he subjoined mercy, and to morality he added tender* 

15 337 



338 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

ness. He said, in substance, " It is not enough foi 
you to deal justly with each other ; it is nQt enough 
for you to help each other in distress : you must love 
one another ; you must have an actual feeling of kind- 
ness in your heart toward every human being." 

My friends, there are those in our day who profess 
to love what is lovely in human nature and con- 
duct, whose sympathies are undeniably for man, but 
who nevertheless scout at the Christian religion, and 
refuse honor to Him who g&ve unto it both its name 
and the amiable spirit which animates it. I marvel 
that they do not see, that, in ignoring Jesus, they 
ignore the very source of all that they profess to 
admire. If scholars, if they have read history with 
any advantage to their knowledge, they must cer- 
tainly know, that, previous to the Christian religion, 
there was neither a religion nor a philosophy which 
was able to make men even humane. The humanities 
that they so applaud, and which I rejoice to know 
many of them exemplify, are, one and all, the out- 
growth of Christian soil : all are due to the teaching 
and influence of Him whom they so loudly reject. 
They admire charity ; but charity sprang from the 
cross. They eulogize liberty ; but the blood of the 
Redeemer is the only solvent able to melt the fetter 
of the slave. They exhort to self-denial ; but neither 
in Socrates nor Plato, neither in Brahmin nor Confu- 
cius, can they find the example which stimulates it. 
They preach of universal brotherhood ; but from no 
other lips than the lips of Him who first proclaimed the 
obligation of fraternal love can they find a text upon 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 339 

which to base their exhortations. Of books the 
world has had no lack; of prophet and teacher each 
age has had its share : but in the gospel, and the 
gospel alone, in the centuries this side of the great 
event which marked a new epoch in human history, 
can they find the lesson and the man able to incul- 
cate and proclaim the doctrines needed for the reali- 
zation of their hopes. 

The object, then, of Christian teaching and influ- 
ence, is to establish and confirm such affections in 
the hearts of men as shall prevent bitterness and 
antagonism, and build up a kingdom and brotherhood 
of peace. In the accomplishment of this, we behold 
the fulfilment of the gospel endeavor. 

Now, I am free to confess that this has never been 
realized, even in the Christian Church. Our experi- 
ence testifies that we have never known such a 
church, — a church entirely and absolutely free from 
dissensions, alienation, and unfriendliness. The near- 
est we have ever, as yet, come to it, is such a state 
of mutual restraint and forbearance, that the open 
manifestation of unfriendliness was prevented. But 
silence is not harmony, and absence of scandal is not 
brotherly unity. We have never known a church, I 
say, in which pique and rivalry, sourness of temper 
and lack of sympathy, did not exist. In other words, 
the Christian religion has never as yet received a full 
and necessary expression even in the action of those 
professing it. I allude to this painful fact, not to 
upbraid any one, not to implicate any one, not out of 
any desire to say a sharp and biting thing, but solely 



340 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

for the purpose of knowing just where we stand. I 
make the statement purely in the interest of truth, 
and that I may point out the remedy. 

The first point I make, then, is this, — that we do 
not adequately express our religion. Christianity is 
more beautiful than it is seen to be in our persons. 
Seen through the medium of our lives, it appears, to 
those who gaze, like a sun shorn of its beams : it is 
suffering an eclipse. We should recognize this fail- 
ure. We should say, " This thing will never do. 
Nineteen centuries are enough to have brought out 
something better than I see around me ; j^ea, and 
something better than I see in my own heart. If 
there is any latent power, any beautiful but unre- 
vealed state, in Christianity, waiting for the hour of 
its manifestation, waiting for a man to demonstrate it, 
then this is the hour, and I am the man." 

This, then, is my first suggestion, — that the path 
by which the world is to reach a fuller realization of 
the beauty and force of Christianity lies through a 
fuller development of amiable dispositions in the in- 
dividual. My friends, men are not, and never will be, 
converted en masse. One soul at a time is the fulfil- 
ment of the law of grace. The beauty and fragrance 
of a garden come by the blossoming of roairy flowers, 
not one : one huge flower can never make a gar- 
den. Each flower is made up of many leaves, not 
of one ; and each passes through every stage of 
growth until it reaches its complete fulness. So it is 
with man. How is a man converted? All at once? 
No. Holy habits are formed as a tree puts on its 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 341 

dress of leaves, — one at a time. Evil is overcome in 
detail. Our exercises are not in the form of one great 
battle, in which we win or lose all at once : they are 
more like a campaign, into which enter many battles, 
sieges, assaults, retreats, and victories. Christianity 
must have a higher, a fuller, a richer development in 
your soul and mine, my hearer, before it has it in the 
world. If the drops withheld themselves from the river, 
there would be no river. We pray that mankind may 
be more kindly disposed one toward another ; that wars 
and contention may cease ; that love and peace may 
reign supreme everj^where. And yet we allow harsh- 
ness and prejudice and passion, that provoke strife 
and disagreement, to reign in our own bosom. We 
adjourn the millennium continually. We put it off, 
and picture it the destiny of the future. We think 
of it as a remote event, that we are never to see or 
feel. This is wrong. The millennium will be a mat- 
ter of personal experience before it can be a matter 
of universal experience. When the soul is at peace 
with God and man, when the passions that cause strife 
are subdued, when the tempers that breed contention 
are banished, then has that soul entered into the mil- 
lennial state. It is not something to wait for: it is 
realized. Heaven is not something, then, to which 
you are to be carried : it has come to you. The fu- 
ture has, then, no change, no joy, save such as come 
in the way of growth and experience. 

Now, there are many, apparently, to whom reli- 
gion does not mean this. They are not gentle and 
amiable. They do not grow merciful and loving and 



342 KTXDLY AFFECTIONS 

gracious as they grow in years. They are harsh 
and knotty and crabbed. Their piety is a kind of 
gnarled piety, a wart-like piety, which is useless ; 
for God does not make his saints out of veneer, 
but out of solid wood. About all the advance some 
church-members make is to grow stiffer and more 
set in their intellectual opinions. The years add 
only to their pugnacity. They are theological vul- 
tures, and can scent heresy thirty miles away. They 
seem to delight in opposing and being opposed. A 
novel expression, a new manner of stating an old 
truth in a sermon, is a godsend to them. If they can 
find something to worry over, to be alarmed at, 
they are happ} r . They must be thoroughly wilful and 
obstinate, and anxious and miserable, or they feel that 
they fail in duty. 

Now, friends, the Church has too many of such 
people already. She does not need another one. 
The cause of Christ does not need partisans, but 
disciples, — men willing to learn and imbibe of the 
spirit of Jesus. A wicked temper is just as wicked 
shown in a church-meeting as it is when shown on 
the dock or in a store. A spiteful prayer damns a 
soul more than an oath. Meanness, with zeal for re- 
ligion as a mask, is at least as bad as meanness else- 
where. A bad life is worse than a bad creed. 

Xow, nature suggests, and the Bible enjoins, that 
men be kindly affectioned one toward another. To 
this we are prompted by many considerations. We 
all have one Father, essentially one nature, one life, 
one destiny. These should make us to be sympa- 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 343 

thetic. The old mariners had this saving, " Cursed 
be the hand that pushes a shipmate overboard! " You 
catch the thought of the adjuration. They were unit- 
ed in the bonds of like perils, like hopes, like labors. 
Living in a world of similar conditions, they must 
breathe the air of harmony. Even brutes of the same 
blood dwell in peace. How, then, shall men quarrel ? 
What right have we to turn against each other, re- 
belling even against the law of a common nature ? 
Xo right at all. A man w T ho can do it is not a Chris- 
tian : he is a barbarian. 

Xow, there is one very unfortunate fact in the histo- 
ry of the Church, to which I have already called your 
attention ; and it is this, — that, in every age since 
the apostolic, it has never been at peace within itself. 
Prejudice and passion and turbulent tempers have 
grown up with its growth. The tares have grown 
with the wheat. Great value has been set upon the 
intellectual expression of its doctrines; and that is 
right : but too little attention has been paid to the 
development of its inward, spiritual life ; and this is 
wron^. Men have thought and stated the truth more 
correctly than they have lived it. The close and 
harmonious connection which should exist between 
the perceptions and the emotions has been thereby 
lost ; and discordance has been the result. Men have 
journeyed to conflict and antagonism along the path 
of nature, and not of grace. B}~ nature, man is posi- 
tive, and proud of his opinions, self-asserting, and 
arrogant. It is a very fine line that divides firm 
from obstinacy ; and many have passed over without 



344 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

knowing it. Christians, even, have lost the disposition 
of love one for another in their adherence to what 
seemed to either party to be the best and only form 
in which to state the truth. You are familiar with 
history; and you know that even in this city, since it 
was founded, many instances have occurred illustrat- 
ing this tendency to sink the Christian in the theolo- 
gian, the disciple in the disputant, the missionary in 
the bigot. The treatment of the earlier Baptists and 
Quakers is a case in point. When those who bear 
the name of Christ can persecute people, it is sure 
evidence that their views of what constitutes faithful- 
ness to God are radically wrong. Charity is faith- 
fulness : brotherly love is loyalty to Jesus. 

You see, therefore, that it is not enough to refrain 
from feeling unkindly toward people. It is not 
enough not to hate or hurt a man : you should love 
him and benefit him. Indifference is not Christianity: 
it is not even humanity. The sun must do more 
than give light sufficient to reveal itself: it must 
shine upon orbs that would otherwise be forever 
dark ; it must search every sod of earth with its vivi- 
fying warmth ; it must compel the rose to fragrance, 
and extort sweetness even from the brier. So it is 
with us. We must communicate the light in our own 
life to others. We must warm cold, inert natures 
into growth. We must make our hearts to other 
hearts what the magnet is to the sand into which it 
is thrust. We must impel their senseless natures 
toward us, and charge them to the full with our own 
properties. 



THE EVIDENCE OF TEUE PIETY. 345 

There are some here, I trust, who are growing up 
to become preachers. Some of you are preachers 
already. To such, I say, My friends, if you wish to 
make a man better, you must make him love you 
first. Nineteen out of every twenty men hear 
through their affections. They listen and give heed 
to you because they like you. You must get their 
confidence before you get their ear. Only lovable 
men and women can be serviceable to Christ ; and we 
must raise up a class of workers in the Church who 
will impress the world with their goodness, their 
amiability, their purity, their whole-hearted manliness, 
before we shall ever dft much toward converting the 
world. . The crabbed, harsh, prim, snappish people 
are hinderances, and not helps, no matter what their 
intentions are. They give an evil advertisement to 
religion ; they sow the seeds of misunderstanding 
and dislike ; they are marplots to every good enter- 
prise. 

This, then, is the premium that God offers for spir- 
itual development, — usefulness. To do good, be 
good. Cherish kindly feeling toward people : let 
them perceive that you do. Have a warm grasp, 
and a bright, cheerful face, for every one. Because a 
man will not go in your path, do not stone him and 
call him hard names. To abuse another's piety is 
a sorry way to prove your own. What a contradic- 
tion of sinners Christ experienced ! How they re- 
viled him ! How they lied about him ! They said 
that he was a " wine-bibber and a glutton." They 
jeered at him as a " friend of publicans and sinners." 

15* 



346 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

They insisted that he did his miracles with the help 
of the Devil. There was nothing wicked and hard 
and mean that they did not say about him. But, 
when " reviled, he reviled not again : " he kept about 
his blessed work. How it stirs the heart of one of 
his followers to read how he conducted himself under 
such treatment ! From the supreme peacefulness of 
his own heart he looked out upon them and their 
abuse as a child looks forth from a window on a 
stormy day when the rain splashes in gusts against 
the panes, and the air is full of the wild sobbings of the 
storm. Their raging could not disturb the serenity 
of his bosom. His character iflade a great impression 
even on his enemies. Its influence was felt even in 
the Sanhedrim. It caused even Pilate to hesitate : 
he shrank from ordering this Galilean peasant to the 
cross. It was not so much his record as it was his 
character that vindicated him before that tribunal; 
and he went from the presence of the Roman gov- 
ernor to his death — and the Roman knew it — an 
innocent man. 

Is it not possible, friends, that we need to be more 
impressed with the value of piety as expressed in the 
character, and not as evidenced in intellectual con- 
victions ? Do we feel rightly ? Are our dispositions 
equal to our understanding ? Are we better theolo- 
gians than we are Christians ? While we have been 
worrying so much about doctrines, nave we lost the 
true practice ? Well, let every heart answer. 

I shrink from expressing what in substance I have 
repeatedly said to you ; but I do wish to deckn* an^ 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 347 

: fore you my abiding conviction, that intellect- 
ual arrogance is very unseemly in a student of God's 
word and world at the present stage of interpreta- 
tion and development. Do not forget that " we 
through a glass darkly." andno^ . "face to fa 

God has never oiven unto anv one man. or class of 
men.* to know all his will, or the application of that 
will to human affairs. You might as well expect 
that one pair of lungs could inhale the whole atmos- 
phere, as that one mind, or class of minds, could re- 
e the perfect apprehension of the divine nature. 
Knowledge of God and of godliness grows with 
the growth of the human mind, and suffers, and must 
always suffer, from the limitation of our faculties. 
Our Father in heaven will appear to each successive 
generation of men more and more vast and maj 
as they are educated into wider views and higher cou- 
pons of spiritual forces. The warmth and sensi- 
tiveness of the divine nature will never be appre- 
mtal man's own nature has been assimilated 
:. Affection can alone appreciate affection, and 
md tenderness. F ... 3 »ine 
unsatis: aid are la. le the 11 

Gh<> jntinually working out fuller and richer 

developments in the soul; and thi^ 5] .lization 

of the thoughts and emotions of man Ls 
formulas, and above all creeds. The sap. you see, 
comes too abundant : new channels ; and 

so the trunk expands : branch after branch 1 to 

accommodate the pressure from within. As the soul 
grows into the purely spiritual, it ri- jnd the 



348 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

need of verbal reliance. At death the departing soul 
must rely on a personal Saviour, and not on a system 
of truth, however correct. We are all being grad- 
uated out of the study of text-booljs into a larger and 
nobler world and life of independent thought and 
impulse. When we have reached the full measure of 
the stature of Christ, we shall need no more the prop 
of written revelation. In heaven the Bible will be 
lived, not read. There the holiness of its injunctions 
is incorporated into character; and, in the presence of 
God, all verbal interpretations of him are out of place. 
There the Deity interprets himself ; there the soul 
apprehends him instinctively, as our senses do fra- 
grance and color here ; and definition — that needed 
resort of enfeebled minds and sluggish consciences — 
is not known. 

I love to think of truth unapprehended to-day, 
but destined at some future date to be mine. The 
endlessness of eternity is to me a delightful thought, 
because it suggests a ceaseless studentship and unlim- 
ited growth. The more I grow in knowledge of 
God's will and man's wants, the more I feel that it is 
impossible -for any collection of words to type and ex- 
press the Deity as he is to man in Jesus. Nothing 
is more essential in my judgment than a creed, — a 
written statement of belief. It answers many de- 
sirable ends : it supplies strength to the weak, a re- 
straint to the reckless, and a cable to the buffeted. 
But I never yet have seen a creed which satisfied my 
mind or soul, — a statement which expressed the 
divine nature in any such fulness as I conceive of it, 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 349 

nor human nature in any such depth of need and 
necessity as I know it to exist. Nor do I feel that I 
have proceeded along any line so far as to have come 
anywhere near to its termination ; and subjects which 
I once thought I had mastered, I now feel I have 
never half examined. The sea I sounded yester- 
day has become bottomless to-day; and, if I ever 
had arrogance of opinion, a growing sense of igno- 
rance is driving it from my mind. Feeling, therefore, 
that I have not discovered every star, I have great 
respect for the telescopes of others. I dare to say 
that many who think in some respects differently 
from myself will have a longer catalogue of starry 
truths at the close of life as the reward of greater 
diffidence as to their conclusions, and greater patience 
to watch and wait. 

I have entered thus into an exposition of my own 
personal feelings in the hope that those near my own 
age in this audience, of equally positive intellectual 
temperaments, maybe withheld from an offensive big- 
otry of opinion and a harshness of judgment toward 
those of dissimilar views. Cherish always charity to 
those who are intellectually unsettled ; be steadfast, but 
never obstinate, in adherence to your own conclusions ; 
condemn no one, however widely astray he may be 
as you judge, who is seeking honestly for light. Piti- 
ful indeed is it to see a man grope with bandaged eyes; 
but sadder yet is it to behold the gropings of a dark- 
ened mind. The position which the evangelical 
churches and preachers in this city should take to- 
ward such is clear as sunlight. The Sermon on the 



350 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

Mount is the pivot upon which, we should all bal- 
ance : with that for our fulcrum, and spiritual activities 
for our lever, ignorance and error, and that denuncia- 
tory bigotry which is often in this city called " liber- 
alism," will eventually be lifted, and toppled over. 
The glacial period in the theological world is past. 
Men of opposite convictions will not be crushed and 
pulverized into unity. The courtesy of charity, the 
winning gentleness of Christ, the more abundantly 
outpoured influence of the Spirit, will accomplish what 
hammers and smiting will never effect. I sincerely 
hope that the day of wrangling and fighting is past, 
and that the spirit and Christ-like life will henceforth 
be relied on to convert the world. % I believe that 
there is a common ground on which humane men and 
women of all denominations, and of no denomination, 
of most antagonistic doctrinal belief, shall come har- 
moniously together, and labor shoulder to shoulder for 
the improvement of the morals of this city. I see no 
reason, — and I have given the subject some thought, 
— I see no reason why a Baptist, an Episcopalian, and 
a Congregationalist, should not work together in an 
effort to bandage a broken limb ; or why Park-street 
Church and Horticultural Hall should not unite in a 
noble ambition to cleanse the filth and clothe the 
naked of North Street. I have no idea that Mr. Em- 
erson and myself, were we standing, by chance, side 
by side on the bank of a river, would not dash with a 
common impulse into the current to rescue a boat- 
load of drowning children; nor do I see any reason 
that should stand a single moment in the way to pre- 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 351 

vent the union of the intellectual and moral forces 
that we may chance to represent, in order to save 
from a worse than watery grave the bodies and souls 
of the thousands in this city who are being swamped 
in a wilder and deeper sea. And I wish to leave 
here and now on record my belief, that such a union 
will eventually be made, — made in safety to all, and 
for the good of all ; and that any method of expres- 
sion in our pulpits, any style of teaching, any verbal 
bitterness, any arrogance of opinion, which tends to 
defer and make impossible such a union of forces, 
seems to me most unfortunate, and a wicked ignor- 
ing of existing facts. 

My friends, there is a certain amount of humane 
impulse in the world, to the increase of which we 
should each contribute our share. A man who has 
lived, and by his life added nothing to the sj-nipathy 
of the world, has lived in vain. To sweeten the moral 
atmosphere by the fragrance of your life ; to teach men 
the lesson of toleration and charity, — that hardest 
lesson to learn ; to speak so kindly of opponents as to 
make others ashamed to treat their enemies harshly ; 
to bear so patiently your burden as to prevent others 
from complaining, — is not the least part of man's duty. 
And yet many seem incapable of appreciating the 
morally corrective influence of such a life. They act 
as if the harmony of the spheres consisted in a com- 
bination of thunder-bolts, and he were the best con- 
tributor to the universal melody who shakes the world 
with the violence of concussions ; and so they flash 
and thunder away with an electric energy, expend- 



352 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

ing all their force against opposing persons and creeds. 
They plant no tree to shade the weariness of coming 
times from future heats ; they revive no withered 
fields with the distillation of dewy influences ; they 
make no opening through the thorny hedge of hu- 
man differences which shall serve as a gateway for 
the race to enter the fields of plenty and of peace. 
Against this barbaric element, as expressed in human 
nature, Christ came to array himself. The cradles 
of the world needed a new model to pattern after ; and 
so he lived. The past could not be changed ; the 
present was hostile and stubborn : in the future lay his 
only chance. He realized it, and, with the instinct 
of a prophet, exclaimed, " Suffer the little children to 
come unto me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." What was this but saying, " You 
adults are hard and intractable ; you have been edu- 
cated wrongly ; your heroism is but animal fierce- 
ness ; your piety is cruel intolerance, your religion 
harsh and bigoted. I have come unto you in the 
simplicity of a frank and sinless nature, and you will 
not receive me : you love darkness rather than light. 
Be it so. Give me the children ; let them come to me ; 
let them see me ; I will be their ideal, and they shall 
grow up like me ; they will read my words when I 
am gone ; they will hear of my death ; fame will 
speak to them of my deeds; and I will put my spirit 
in their hearts, and a new type of manhood and wo- 
manhood shall be known in the world " ? In this 
lies the secret of his craving for the children. The 
hope of the world lay in the cradles ; and to the era- 



THE EVIDENCE OF TRUE PIETY. 353 

dies he turned yearningly, and made his pathetic ap- 
peal. What a fulfilment his hope has had ! He has 
become the ideal of all the world knows of goodness 
and truth ; and mothers all over the globe are bring- 
ing their children to him. Over how many cradles 
will mothers sing of Christ to-night ! by the side of 
how many couches will little hands be clasped ! in 
how many chambers, near and far, will infant lips be 
taught to pray ! and, when the sun shall again appear 
in the east, — I never wonder that the ancients pic- 
tured him as a god, and seated him in a car, — when 
the sun, I say, shall again appear in the east, the globe 
will have been belted with one prolonged sound of 
prayer, and your little child shall only assist that dec- 
laration of praise whose line has gone out to all the 
earth, and whose words have reached to the end of 
the world. 

And now, my friends, what is the lesson of this 
position ? It is this, — all harshness of speech, all 
captiousness, all suspicion, all bigotry, all unfriend- 
liness of thought and utterance, all fault-finding, all 
judgment unsupported by knowledge, or, if so sup- 
ported, nevertheless uncalled for, are but personal, 
and, so far as the public are influenced, public lapses 
into barbarism, — that barbarism that was before 
Christ came. Its tendency in a church or a family, 
or in social life, is all one way, and a bad way at 
that. I enter my protest as a man and as a Chris- 
tian against it ; I re-enforce my protest with the 
words of Him, the latchet of whose shoes I am not 
worthy to unloose, when he said to his disciples, 



354 KINDLY AFFECTIONS 

"Judge not, lest ye be judged;" and to this, with 
cumulative emphasis, I add the command of the apos- 
tle, " Be kindly affectioned one to another with 
brotherly love." 

I know to whom I speak. I speak advisedly, and 
address my words to those in whose hearts they may 
the longest abide I speak to you whose characters 
are forming, whose natures are yet plastic, and are 
being shaped by the touch of every impression ; to 
you whose piety is typical, because it foreshadows 
what the piety of the future shall be ; I speak to j^ou 
who are nobly ambitious to incorporate in your lives 
the purest elements of the New Testament, — the 
purity, the self-sacrifice, the patience, the charity, 
which shine out of and illumine all its pages. Se- 
lecting these, and whatever of intellectual humility 
and kindly feelings this discourse has advocated, I 
bring them all together, like threads perfect in their 
whiteness, and weave them into one broad banner. 
With whatever resolution I may command for the 
staff, I plant it here in this pulpit to-day. Here, 
where Griffin preached and prayed, upholding the 
faith once delivered to the saints, without bitterness 
to any ; here, where Stone for seventeen years pro- 
claimed liberty for the slave, and exemplified cour- 
tesy to men, — I plant, I say, with whatever warmth 
of heart and strength of will I have, this standard 
and this banner, and call upon you to rally to it. 
The staff may part; the standard may fall: but the 
folds of the banner shall never be rent, or the banner 
itself droop ; for, in the hour of peril, angel-hands, 



THE EVIDENCE OP TRUE PIETY. 355 

white as its own folds, shall bear it up, until not alone 
you, but this whole citj T , joined in one humane and 
reverent brotherhood, shall stand with you beneath 
it, and, with uncovered heads and uplifted faces, say, 
" This is the banner of our God." 



SABBATH MORNING, MARCH S, 1872. 



SERMON. 



SUBJECT. -ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 
"Abhor that which is evil."- Rom. xii. 9. 

THERE are some words that are pictures. They 
appeal to the imagination. Around them the 
mind groups collateral associations. Such a word is 
"love." It does not stand alone, but as the central 
figure of a group. It is not a single conception : it 
is the one clearly-defined tree of the foreground, with 
a landscape of a thousand objects back of and around 
it. Love suggests father and mother, brother and 
sister, parent and child, friend and lover, home, and a 
long train of domestic associations. Take, again, the 
word " war." You cannot isolate the word from the 
fierce group of horrors which cling around it. There 
are blood and death, famine and conflagration, and 
the hoarse roar of battle, in the word; and the 
imagination must take in all these, and press them 
home upon the consciousness, before one can realize 
what is meant by the word " war." Now, the Bible 
is full of these words that are verbal pictures. He 
who reads the Scripture with the reason and judg- 

356 



ABHOKKENCE OF EVIL. 357 

ment alone can never be impressed with its power ; 
but read, not with one faculty, or class of faculties^ 
but with every faculty, and it becomes a sublime 
and terrible instrument to affect the mind and 
heart. 

Now, this word " abhor" belongs to that class of 
words which appeal to the imagination. Etymological- 
ly, it means to bristle ; to stand on end with fright or 
excitement ; to be repelled from an object with the 
violent force of au uncontrollable aversion and re- 
pugnance. Now, Paul was a scholar and a linguist. 
His vocabulary was enriched with the knowledge 
of many tongues. He was a dealer in words, as all 
public speakers and writers are. He weighed his 
expressions as an ancient money-changer did his 
coin. He selected his shaft from a full quiver, like 
an adroit archer. He shot to kill. A great part 
of the intellectual pleasure derived from a perusal 
of Paul's writings comes from the power and accu- 
racy of his language. His words are picked words. 
Like soldiers selected to carry a point that must be 
captured, they are full of vigor and power, — full of an 
irrepressible energy. They smite like cannon-balls ; 
they come down upon the conscience like a ponderous 
battle-axe on a helmet ; they are aimed with the 
unerring precision of a rifle-bullet. It is impossible 
for guilt to read the Pauline epistles, and not shrink 
and cry out. He uses single words as no other writer 
that I have ever read. The study of Paul's vocabu- 
lary is the study of theology. You sink with his 
phrases to the depth of human depravity ; you rise 



358 ABHORRENCE OP EVIL. 

as with wings that lift you with a majesty of motion 
to the air where the glorified of God alone soar. 

Now, suppose one wishes to understand and obey 
this injunction ; suppose he wishes to learn what is 
the relation and sentiment of a Christian soul toward 
evil : what must he do ? Evidently this : Ascer- 
tain what this word "abhor" means; what is the 
diameter of the circumference which includes all its 
significance ; what is the measure of feeling which 
corresponds to the term here used. Knowledge of 
this is the first step toward obedience. 

Now, every one of us desires to know just what 
should be our feeling toward evil ; for conduct is but 
the expression of feeling. As a man feels, he acts. 
There is no real virtue, above the level of fear, that 
is higher than the convictions. Fear modifies action : 
but release man from fear, and he will act himself out 
precisely; for an evil tree cannot bring forth good 
fruit. 

Now, Paul is giving to the Christians of the Church 
at Rome just what they all needed, — a true measure 
of feeling by which to be guided in their conduct 
toward evil. It was a very practical direction. Evil 
was all around them : they saw it in the system of 
government then prevailing, in the behavior of the 
rich, in the licenticrusness of society, in the violence 
of the rabble. We may well suppose that many 
times, individually and as a body, they had longed to 
go to the apostle, as to the highest authority, and 
say, " Tell us how we are to feel toward sin ; give 
us some invariable rule, some definite instruction, 






ABHOEEENCE OF EVIL. 359 

to guide us in this matter." We must remember, 
that, at the time when this epistle was written, Chris- 
tianity was in a crude state. The New Testament, 
as we have it, was not known. The churches had no 
collocation of Sacred Scriptures to which to go, as 
we have, for direction. Christianity was in its in- 
fancy. As a system of truth, as a teacher of ethics, 
it was being formed. Paul was a guide, blazing a 
path through the tangled morals and the unexplored 
wilderness of the world's sins ; and this was one 
of the waymarks he made. As a hunter in a forest, 
when threading his way through the bewildering 
pines on a clouded day toward a distant point, lifts 
his axe, and strikes a piece of bark as large as his hat 
from the side of a giant tree, saying to himself, 
" There, nobody will ever fail to see that ; " so Paul 
left this word, as he was opening up the path 
of Christian morals, like a broad, unmistakable sign, 
as a guide for those who should come after him. 

My friends, have we all seen this sign on the tree ? 
Have we passed by Paul's landmark? Have we 
been following along his road ? Have we " ab- 
horred " sin ? Have we felt this strong, Pauline, 
gospel detestation of evil ? Have we shrunk back 
from it, as a woman shrinks, with the suddenness 
of uncontrollable fear, from an adder coiled in her 
path ? Have we failed in this respect ? If so, how 
great a failure is it ? and what shall we do ? 

In the first place, I remark that the failure to feel 
this abhorrence of evil is, by as much as it is experi- 
enced, a proof that our spiritual and moral condition 



360 ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 

is not good. When flesh is stricken with the numb- 
ness of paralysis, it does not feel the puncture of a 
pin ; and the reason is, because the nerves which 
telegraph the pain to the great nervous centre — 
the brain — are inoperant. The connection between 
the member and the seat of the sensations is lost. 
The wires are cut, and communication is destroyed. 
The fact that the patient does not feel the surgeon's 
test proves this. The state or condition demon- 
strates the cause. So it is between the soul and 
Christ, who is to each of us, as his followers, what 
the brain sensationally is to the body. To be con- 
nected to Christ is to feel as he feels; to have his 
temper and disposition. We are then truly members 
of his body. Now, we know how he felt toward 
sin, — toward its enticements and seductions. You 
recall his reply to the Tempter when tempting him. 
You know how intense is the moral antagonism of the 
two. And, when Paul selects the word " abhor " as 
descriptive of that feeling that a follower of Christ 
should have toward evil, we know that he did not 
go beyond "the truth. Knowing as he did what 
Christ's feelings were, he could not have chosen a 
milder or a less intense word. 

Now, as I have said, one of the tests that Christ is 
or is not with a soul is found in the presence or 
absence of this abhorrence of evil in the soul ; and 
the question comes home to every follower of the 
Saviour present, " Have I this abhorrence ? " I make 
no application of this feeling, friends ; I leave that 
for each of you to do for yourself: I inquire only 



ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 361 

as to its presence in your heart. Among other evi- 
dences, have you this evidence that you are Christ's? 
Do you look upon any evil, and not feel its enormity? 
Do you tolerate any sin in yourself? Is the pres- 
ence of evil in this city a daily worry and anxiety to 
your soul ? Can you buy and sell in company with 
trickery and deceit ? Do you carry your abhorrence 
of sin into politics, and vote as you pray ? What is 
your status, judged by this text ? 

I think that we shall grow, in time, to consider such 
questions as these .as the pivotal ones in Christian 
experience. For centuries, the foremost interroga- 
tion of Christendom has been, " What do you believe ? 
How do you interpret this ? Do you assent to that ? " 
The perceptive powers have held sway, and dominat- 
ed over the emotive faculties. But, my friends, the 
Church will see its error in time. God will at last 
touch our blurred eyes ; and brethren will no longer 
smite each other, not knowing whom they hit. We 
grant the value of intellect. We have spoken as 
strong words as any one in support of maintaining a 
creed. No one but an ignorant or wicked person can 
possibly misunderstand our position. But, granting 
the full importance of the perceptive faculties in 
theology, — and they have high uses, — still these are 
not supreme. Faith was never declared to be " the 
fulfilling of the law." Statements and definitions 
of belief are not of primary importance. The letter 
is beneath the spirit. It is the emotive, and not 
the perceptive power, that the Holy Ghost regen- 
erates ; and the result aimed at is not improvement 

16 



362 ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 

in man's philosophy, so much as improvement in his 
practice. I would sooner have you all so changed in 
heart and soul from what you were when in the state 
of nature, as to "abhor" evil, than to see you all 
qualified to fill chairs of systematic theology in our 
theological seminaries. It is not increase of theo- 
logical knowledge that the earth needs : it is the 
more universal dissemination of Christian feeling. I 
set you so frequently face to face with this great 
truth, because it is the solar truth of the Christian 
scheme, and the pillar of guiding flame, commanded 
of God to precede and direct the march of the ages. 
It is not Christ in your heads, but Christ enthroned 
in your hearts, that I would fain advance. In spite 
of the prayer and command of the Master, that his 
disciples might be one as he and the Father are one ; 
notwithstanding that this immortal aspiration has 
been before their eyes, and sounded in their ears, at 
almost every recurring sacrament ; notwithstanding 
the striving of the Spirit for these twenty centuries, 
that the same mind might be in her membership that 
is in Christ Jesus, — notwithstanding all this, I say, 
the deplorable assertion is true, that the history of the 
Church has been the history of division and differ- 
ences. The ages back of us resound with the cry 
of the zealot and the bigot: they are filled with 
the voice of contention and anathema. The spring 
opened by the love of God on Calvary had scarcely 
become a stream before its pure waters were defiled 
by the trampling of contestants ; and, alas ! they 
remain turbid to this day. 



ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 3(33 

Is there a man in this audience who longs to con- 
tinue this state of things? What Christian heart 
here pants to prolong the strife of words, the battle 
of hostile intellects, the spirit of contention and 
bitterness? Let the graves have their victory, I 
say, and cover forever beneath their grasses the war- 
riors and the war. Palsied forever be the hand 
that would scatter the teeth of dragons ! Silenced 
be the tongue that would launch forth a battle- 
cry among brethren ! If we are of the family of 
God, then let peace be and abide, like an angel 
of light, in the circle of our banded love. 

Is there a religion of the heart, friends ? and, if so, 
do you feel it ? Is there a piety of the soul which 
says to the head, " Thou art my servant, and not my 
master " ? Is there a union of mind with mind such 
as cements in sweet accord the intelligences of 
heaven? Is there a sea somewhere, unvexed by 
storms, in which all ships may sail ; over which no 
sun shines, nor moon, nor stars, and yet which is 
illumined from centre unto its golden marge by the 
light which cometh forth from the throne of God, 
and from Him, yea, from that inconceivable splendor, 
called in Scripture "the Light of the world"? If 
so, my people, I charge you to sail that sea. Unite 
your hearts. Hate with one accord the things hateful 
to God. Love the things that are lovely and above 
reproach. The fathers trusted themselves to cur- 
rents of their own starting ; and they wrecked their 
own peace and the peace of the Church. The elder 
Beecher was wont to grieve, and express grave doubts, 



364 ABHORKENCE OF EVIL. 

whether Bishop Heber was of those born of Gocl. 
How much wiser he is to-day ! How much those old 
preachers have learned of the love of God since 
when they fought each other, and moaned and 
grieved over each other's lapses, as they conceived, 
from the true faith ! Taylor and Tyler no longer 
contend. Beecher and Xettleton are no longer sepa- 
rated. Woods has no longer need to labor to har- 
monize differences between brethren. Even Calvin 
and Channing have found a common platform at last, 
and stand, hand clasped in hand, happy in a common 
love, before the throne of an infinite and a like-expe- 
rienced mercy. 

These personal allusions naturally lead us to the 
contemplation of the second division of the subject. 
The command of the text is, " Abhor that which is 
evil." It does not enjoin, " Abhor him who is evil," 
but that; not the evil person, but the evil temper 
or tendency, — the evil in the person. Here, you see, 
is a wide distinction, suggested by the employment 
of a single word. Had it been " Abhor him," it would 
have enjoined a religion of hate, and not a religion of 
love. It is sin God hates, not the sinner. It is the 
evil in you, — the bad temper, the rebellious will, 
the unrepented wickedness, — and not yourself, my 
hearer, that your Creator and Judge condemns. A 
loving father does not cease to love a disobedient 
child. Condemnation and punishment do not denote 
the cessation of affection. It is true that you can 
only reach the crime through the criminal. You must 
put the thief, if you would check the thieving propen- 



ABHORKENCE OF EVIL. 365 

sity, into jail. But this organic necessity — this insep- 
arability, before the law, of agent and act — does not 
militate against the truth of the statement, that the 
object of the abhorrence is not the doer, but the deed. 
For, albeit that the world was full of sin, — yea, full to 
the very brim of uncleanliness, — still it is recorded 
that " God so loved the world, that he gave his 
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." This 
makes the statement incontrovertible. 

What then, in the light of Scripture, is our duty ? 
Plainly this, — obey. Nor is obedience at all compli- 
cated or difficult, granted a willing disposition. It 
is impurity in the atmosphere, and not the air itself, 
against which the senses revolt. The air is pure, and 
to be breathed freely. It is the contaminated and 
contaminating current which has intruded itself into 
the healthful element from which men shrink and 
flee. Yet this love for wicked men is the result and 
triumph of grace, and not of nature. By nature, 
man is not benevolent ; and the wars, the cruelty 
and barbarism, of ages, witness to the truth of the 
statement. If Christianity did not absolutely give 
birth to humanity, it has incontestably developed it. 
But the impulse of humanity in its highest form is not 
the impulse of love. It is not in any sense the seed 
from which sprang the consummate flower of modern 
civilization. The two emotions are as distinct as two 
trees of different species. The Christian religion, as 
you see, is not an improvement of the old religions ; 
not the refinement and spiritualization of the old phi- 



366 ABHOKKENCE OF EVIL. 

losophies : it is a new religion, like unto none other 
that the world ever saw. Many of its precepts and 
maxims, it is true, are similar to those that had been 
enunciated long before Christ came ; but the spirit 
which clothed the dry bones with flesh, which ani- 
mated the lifeless forms of truth, breathing vitality 
and energy into every nerveless joint and withered 
vein, was born, and born alone, on Calvary. Chris- 
tianity is not the last and fairest of a long succession 
of children : it is the first-born and only-begotten of 
God. . This is the simple historical truth; and may 
none of you, through vain philosophy, be led away and 
deceived ! Against sin, God is as a thunder-gust 
when it rideth forth in blackness, with the whirlwind 
for its chariot, and the terrible lightnings for the ex- 
pression of its power. Toward the sinner he is like 
the light of the morning, which waketh a slumbering 
world to life ; or as the rain which comes with refresh- 
ment to the earth, and washeth the stains from the 
soiled faces of the flowers. Oh for an exhibition of 
God in the thunder, that the sin and iniquity wrought 
into systems might be beaten down ! Oh for the 
dawn of the light, that the sleeping virtues of our 
souls may be aroused ! If you would imitate Je- 
hovah, ye followers of him, take sin by the throat, 
and the sinner by the hand. 

But this abhorrence of evil which we are com- 
manded to feel is not a natural growth: it is the 
result of education. Let me explain. By nature, 
no one hates sin. There is no natural repulsion from 
it in the human heart. I am not reasoning theologi- 



ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 367 

cally now ; I am not going over, like a parrot, the 
orthodox belief: I am drawing my conclusions from 
observation and experience. What is the conclusion 
of observation ? It is this, — that men err easily. It 
does not require a great effort for man to do evil. 
Thieves and burglars and murderers are not mar- 
tyrs. There is in the human race, and has been dur- 
ing all the years of which history tells us, a great law 
of evil gravitation. By the weight of inward inclina- 
tions, by the action of downward-tending affinities, 
men degrade. The trouble has been, — and, as you all 
know, it requires great effort, — the trouble has been, 
I say, to project men upward. Of all the streams 
started, out of whatever soil springing, under what- 
ever sk) r , whether their sources were in valleys or on 
mountains, wherever located, under whatever condi- 
tions of individual, tribal, or national life, still, w r hether 
rippling, or flowing with deep channels and full banks, 
the currents of all have set one way : they have all 
flowed toward, and emptied themselves into, the 
great, deep, unfathomable gulf of human corruption. 
The sea that the ships of hell sail knows no ebb, 
suffers no drought. It has been so from the beGrin- 
ning : it is equally so to-day. As a race, man is not 
by nature amiable ; he is not peaceable ; he is not 
humane. If not this, who is here who dares reject 
this saying, — " He is not holy " ? No one can deny this 
testimony of observation. Man's status by nature is 
proved beyond cavil, beyond peradventure. It is 
shown by the customs of every heathen tribe, by the 
vices of every civilized nation. You read it in every 



368 ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 

law written in your statute-books, in every jail you 
are taxed to build, in every precaution you take in 
business, in every lock and bolt on the doors of your 
dwellings. When orthodox preachers declare that 
man by nature is sinful, they do not advertise a 
notion peculiar to their own sect ; they do not say 
so merely because Paul and Calvin and Edwards said 
it : they say it because it is a fact, the evidence and 
sure proof of which is fresh, constantly corroborated, 
and patent to all. It is the only explanation which 
fully accounts for the phenomenon of evil in the 
world. 

If impelled by a stubborn determination not to yield 
this point until the evidence partakes of the force and 
characteristics of an avalanche, a presence and ma- 
jesty that you cannot resist, — if this is your spirit, 
and you call for proof, I retort on you, Look ivithin. 
Now, my hearer, I know nothing of your life ; but 
you know I would not draw aside the curtain behind 
which seven-tenths of your life lie hidden, three-tenths 
only being visible. Let it hang there undisturbed, 
jwith untouched cord and woven folds. I would not 
i lift the fringe with my finger. A day will come in 
which it shall be drawn aside ; yea, an hour and a 
moment will come, when a swift, an invisible, an 
irresistible hand, casting no shadow as it falls, shall 
grasp it, and tear it down, and fling it aside ; and all 
the secrets, the subterfuges, the falsities, the sins, of 
your life, shall stand exposed. But that hand is an- 
other's, not mine ; and that day is somewhere ahead, 
not yet. And now I ask you only to go behind that 



ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 359 

curtain yourself, and standing there alone amid the 
errors, the lapses, the struggles, of your life, — the 
screen between you and me, — tell me if it has been 
easy to be virtuous. Has honesty cost no effort ? Has 
purity been a thing you could not lose ? Has temp- 
tation met with no response ? Have you found no 
evil within answering to evil without ? Ah me ! the 
knife is keen and long and searching ; and it draws 
blood. " Away with it, away with it ! " you say. " It 
is cruel ; and it hurts. Put it up. I yield." And 
so we agree, do we, friend, that man by nature does 
not " abhor evil," and abhorrence must come, not 
through nature, but through grace. 

Hail to that precious word ! Like a well in a des- 
ert, thousands shall come to it, and drink. By grace, 
by the sweet favor of God, is man folded within the 
embrace of his love. By the touch of its infinite 
power, the blinded eyes are made to see, the deaf 
ears to hear, the insensible heart to feel, the sinful- 
ness of sin. Not alone by salvation is the goodness 
of God manifested, but more yet, as I often think, 
in making incapacity capable, insensibility sensitive, 
and so renewing the nature that the affinities and 
antagonisms of it become but a reflection of his own. 
It is not the heaven he is to give me, but the heaven 
already mine, for which I thank him. Like a slave 
just emancipated, fresh from chains, with the marks 
of the whip unhealed on his back, with his ankles 
and wrists swollen from the torture of the shackles, 
I know not what wealth, what refinement, what 
enlargement of capacity, what joys, are ahead: I 

16* 



870 ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 

only know that I am free. I am no longer under 
dominion to my old taskmaster; I am no longer 
bound : I am emancipated ; I am redeemed ; I am a 
free man in Christ Jesus. This is all I care to know. 
Let the future alone. My cup runneth over as it is. 
Say nothing of what I am to have and to be. This 
is luxury, — to feel that I have my freedom ; to feel 
that I am free. No more as a beggar, but as one 
rescued from poverty, and who goeth to the door 
of his benefactor to give thanks daily, go I to God in 
prayer, — no more to ask as one who has not ; for in 
Christ he has given me all. " How dull and stupid I 
have been ! " I say often to myself. " I have made it 
a duty to feel poor, when God has made it a duty for 
me to feel rich. Like a sluggish or over-timid bird, 
I have clung to the miserable and outgrown nest 
when the wings ached for exercise, the winds solicited 
my weight, the Spirit was pushing me, and the illim- 
itable spaces, calling from all their crystal depths, 
said, ' Come up into us, and enjoy your freedom, and 
grow your power.'" And I have said to myself, hesi- 
tating, as one suddenly made rich hesitates to believe 
his good fortune, " Yes ; it must be so : the apostle 
was right when he said, ' Rejoice evermore ; and again 
I say, Rejoice.' " 

This, then, is the source of that abhorrence of sin 
which the Scripture makes it a duty for us all to feel. 
It is the result of the new birth ; it is the result and 
proof of holiness. It should exist, it should be felt 
in full measure, by us all. 

And now, friends, what more need I say ? You 



ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 371 

know, each and all of you, how much of sin dwells 
in you. I think I have shown you how it works, 
and to what result it leads. When you find your 
thoughts on the morrow running in an evil way, your 
imagination lending its powers to sin, if you will 
recall what I have said, it may, perchance, serve to 
help you, and prove a kind of check. Were I to 
exhort, I should say to every one of you here, Get 
sin by the throat as you would a robber and a mur- 
derer. Kill, first of all, that sin which is killing you 
fastest, — that besetting, that productive sin, which, 
true to the prolific instinct of evil, begets a thousand 
other sins. If it is your right hand which offends 
you, if it is your eye even, whatever precious fac- 
ulty it is, cut it off, pluck it out, and cast it from 
you ; maim yourself touching any earthly use or enjoy- 
ment, if thereby you can enter into the enlarged and 
ever-enlarging life of the soul. That life will be 
sublime. Then will our highest faculties find their 
highest use ; and out of those already ours, as flow- 
ers and trees come out of seeds, new powers will 
spring. No exercise shall tire, no grossness weigh 
us down. We shall float upon that atmosphere of 
life, and rest, as I have seen falcons in the warm sum- 
mer-time hang over meadows, lying on the air motion- 
less, a bunch of feathers smitten by the sun, a 
winged radiance ; for there the corruptible shall have 
put on incorruption, and the mortal shall have put on 
immortality. Live then, I do beseech you, friends, 
with a bias toward the stars, so that, whenever the 
summons comes, whether at the second or the third 



372 ABHORRENCE OF EVIL. 

watch of the night, it shall find you plumed and ready 
for your upward flight. Then shall you mount at 
death as birds on some summer morning sail up, 
cleaving the dark mist to find the sunshine overhead ; 
and when they find it, the warm rays of orange and 
the clear fields of blue, the cool ether and the far- 
reaching sky, hovering on joyous wing, their perch on 
earth forgot, they pour their gladness forth in song. 
Hail to that mode of life which makes our death the 
hour of sunrise, — the hour of elevation and of song ! 
And, O thou Purifier of the gross ! purge out our 
heaviness, impart to us thy buoyancy, that, with a 
song unsung till then, we may at death soar upward, 
and forever dwell with thee. 



